Possibility: Stable
by Mystic83
Summary: SEQUEL CHAPTERS ADDED! S2 SPOILERS ALL OVER IT! What if Starbuck had a reason to return to the bunkroom before heading off with Baltar the night of his election? What if Apollo had no reason to chastise her into taking the Raider on a suicide mission?
1. Stable

This will be a series of stand-alone stories which deal with the choices that the characters on Battlestar Galactica have made throughout the mini-series and first season (I'll be posted in as much of the order of the season as I can). I want to explore what would have happened/changed if things had gone differently. Some of the stories will be angst, some will be shippy, some will be funny. There will be different pairings throughout. Don't feel like you have to check out each one to understand the others. All I ask is that if it intrigues you, then give it a try. Hope you enjoy reading the stories as much as I enjoyed writing them!

**_

* * *

There are pivotal moments in one's life where if you take the wrong path everything may change. Those changes may be for the good or for the bad. The possibilities are endless.

* * *

Kara Thrace shut her eyes to the noise and chaos surrounding her and did the only thing she knew to keep herself moving, to keep herself surviving. It was no longer as easy a thing to do as it once was. But still, it was all she had right now._**

Swaying slightly to the music, she let her rationality go and surrendered to her imagination.

She could feel his hand pressing on her lower back. It would be gentle. Stable but not too soft. Kind of like him. No wonder it made her want to shiver from head to toe. His mouth was close to her ear. She could feel his breath on her hair. Could imagine the things he would whisper to her that no one else would hear. She wouldn't want anyone else to hear. This was just for him and for her. If she tried hard enough, she could even smell that musky cologne that he had run out of a week before but whose smell still lingered.

Lee.

"Are you all right, Lieutenant Thrace?"

She winced slightly as her partner's words ripped her from her little daydream. The hand on her back became a little too insistent and not at all gentle. The words shifted from light teasing to a biting kind of sarcasm with a hint of I-know-something-you-don't-know. And the cologne. Frankly, he just smelled like alcohol.

Pushing back the haze of her mind, she opened her eyes and stared at Dr. Gaius Baltar. "Oh. I'm doing just fine. Why do you ask?"

"Because the song ended a minute ago."

"Oh," she looked around at the rest of the floor where couples were casually talking. No one was dancing. "I didn't realize."

Baltar gave her an odd look. "Perhaps you should call it a night, Kara. I think that would be wise."

Thrown off by the fact that he had used her first name even though she never gave him permission, an error she usually punched men for, she watched in silence as his grin turned from genuine concern to something completely slimy and, frankly, creepy.

"How about I just take you to my quarters? They're closer to the hangar bay. You can sleep it off and then go back to your pilot's bunking in the morning."

"I don't think that's smart. The CAG will have my ass if I don't show up in my bunk."

Baltar pulled her close and, leaning over, whispered in her ear, "But it could be so much fun. And what the CAG doesn't know won't hurt him."

She had expected herself to shiver a little at such an intimate gesture. Her daydream of having Lee do the same thing only seconds before had practically made her faint, after all.

But nothing. She didn't feel one tingle. And she had had an awful lot of ambrosia. That usually helped when she wanted to imagine that the easy-to-get guy was the guy she couldn't have.

"I need more ambrosia," she said loudly.

Dr. Baltar laughed and pointed across the room. "The bar is right over there. I'm sure they'd be happy to help one of the Fleet's most notorious pilots."

She scrunched up her nose. "They have to be serving the crappy stuff by now." Her eyes lit up as a plan formed in her head. "I have a bottle of the good stuff saved in my locker back on Galactica. I was planning on using it for a particularly good hand of triad, but oh well. On a night like tonight, there are more important things it can be used for."

She walked a few steps before turning to look at the good Doctor. He seemed to be standing there and if she didn't know better, she would have thought he looked shaken up. Almost as if the resident genius couldn't understand the workings of a Viper Pilot from the shady side of Caprica. Somehow she threw him off, and he didn't look altogether comfortable with that.

And for some reason, that made her feel a little bit of pity for him. He had risen so high to the top but at the cost of everything he loved. Vice President of a motley crew of survivors who had no idea what the next step was.

That could be the only reason she found herself asking, "Are you coming?"

"I'm invited?"

Smirking, she walked back over and leaned in close to him. "Well, how else am I going to make it through these halls and into a shuttle? I am slightly drunk in case you didn't notice. I might need a rocket scientist to help me find Galactica, no matter how big of a ship it is."

"I'm not a rocket scientist."

She pulled back and squinted her eyes at him. "Close enough. And I don't want you to think you can accidentally steer me into your quarters when we get there. I might be a little confused, but I know one end of my ship from the other."

He made a cross over his heart and nodded solemnly while saying in an extra sweet tone, "I promise, Lieutenant. No foul play."

She glared at him and started to make her way to the nearest shuttle.

At least she thought it was the right way.

* * *

One hour later, she was stumbling into the bunkroom, happy to see she was right. On such a celebratory night like tonight, there was no one there. She could safely steal away her much coveted bottle without anyone being the wiser. Thank the gods, the pilots on her ship knew how to party, and they didn't let up until someone forced them to.

It made her want to shed some tears of pride.

Choosing to find her hidden bottle of ambrosia instead of surrounding to that lovely show of emotion, she stumbled across the bunkroom and yanked open her locker door. Immediately, she was greeted by her favorite picture of happier times. Both the Adama brothers smiled back at her. Well, in Lee's cause, he kind of gave a serious grin.

"Never changed," she muttered, touching the picture lightly.

"Having a small walk down memory lane?"

The voice startled her. She had really thought there was no one in the bunkroom. Especially him. She would have known if he was here. He sort of emitted this aura of warmth that encompassed those around him.

Okay. That was definitely the alcohol talking.

"No," she said, grabbing the bottle off the shelf and slamming the door shut. She held it up and smiled at him broadly. "Want a drink, Lee?"

"I have early patrol in the morning."

"Is that why you left so early?"

She heard him hesitate briefly before answering. "Yes and no."

"What kind of answer is that?"

"The only kind you're going to be getting from me tonight. Why don't you change into your sweats and get some rest so that those of us who have to fly a Viper can have some peace?"

"It's just you in the bunkroom."

"And I really would have loved to keep it that way."

He was so uptight. Thank god he had a woman like her to fix that. Sighing, she tossed the bottle into his bunk, hiked up her dress, and climbed up the ladder rungs. "Move over."

Groaning, Lee sat up in his bed to make room for her even as he protested, "I have to get some sleep."

"Just one drink and then I'll leave you alone." After mostly falling into a comfortable position at the bottom of his bunk, she wrenched his blankets out of where they were tucked in and huddled underneath them. "Galactica is a lot colder than Cloud Nine."

"That's because Cloud Nine is a luxury liner and Galactica is a military Battlestar."

"You're being an ass."

"You woke me up."

"I was just trying to be nice and share my wealth with the hardworking CAG who never seems to have much fun. It's my charitable act of the year."

"Now who's being an ass?"

"I'm drunk. What's your excuse?" With a quick flick of the wrist, she had popped the cork out of the bottle and was taking a sip.

"That's real dignified," Lee said, rolling his eyes at her.

"You work with what you have. And what I have right now is no glasses to drink out of."

She shoved the bottle into Lee's face which he reluctantly took from her. "Don't you think you should slow down, Kara. If I didn't know better, I would think you're trying desperately to drink something away."

"More like someone," she muttered with a sarcastic laugh.

Lee just gave her a strange look and took a drink out of the bottle. He turned to hand the ambrosia back to her as the bunkroom hatch slid open. Starbuck winced as she saw Dr. Baltar enter with a few glasses in hand.

"It took me a while, but I found them," Baltar said as he stepped into the room. He furrowed his brow and started to scan the room.

Lee took one look at his current bunkmate and shook his head. "You weren't actually going to let him…"

She shrugged her shoulders in indifference.

"Where are you, Kara?" Baltar's voice said from below.

Lee saw her cringe at the use of her name and for once in his life, he let himself react impetuously instead of thinking things out. It only made sense that he would. He had never really, truly though things out when it had something to do with Kara Thrace.

Hopping down from the top bunk, he smiled at Dr. Baltar. "She's with me, Doctor."

Starbuck gave him a sheepish grin and a small wave from where she sat in the bunk when he looked at her confused. "Hi, Doc."

They could both see Baltar's surprise at the scene in front of him. Kara, sitting slightly disheveled in a bunk not her own, tucked safe away underneath the blankets. Lee, being half-naked since he had been trying to sleep when he got woken up, so obviously in the middle of something with the woman in his bed.

The jealousy and anger was written all over Gaius Baltar's face.

Lee's mouth turned up on the side into a small smile-smirk. "And I don't think we'll be needing the glasses."

"Kara?" Dr. Baltar said, looking up at her.

Lee shifted so that he stood in between the path of Dr. Baltar's eyes and the inebriated pilot currently setting up camp in his bunk. "I don't think I have to remind you that it's Lieutenant Thrace. Formalities might have been lax on Cloud Nine, but you're back on Galactica now, Doctor. Until she tells you otherwise, it is Lieutenant Thrace or nothing."

Kara strained to hear what Lee was saying to Baltar, but her ears didn't seem to be working. Maybe everybody was right. Maybe she had had enough to drink. Sighing, she set the bottle of ambrosia on the small shelf at the top of the bunk, leaned back against the wall, and resigned herself to only being able to watch what was unfolding.

"Here's something I never understood, Captain Adama." Baltar made sure to enunciate the last few words. "You have always called Lieutenant Thrace by her first name. A little familiar don't you think considering you are her boss?"

Lee moved in closer so that he stood over the other man. "For reasons I do not have to share with you, I earned that right."

"Maybe I want to have a chance to do that, too," Baltar said, obviously not backing down.

Lee could see Baltar was not going to give up on the prospect of taking the mighty Starbuck to his bed that night as easily as he first thought. Which is why he finally gave up and let his temper kick in. "Well, maybe Kara doesn't want to give you that chance."

"She came back to Galactica with me," Baltar pointed out proudly.

Lee smirked and motioned at his bunk. "But she's in my bed."

Baltar shifted around Apollo to look at the woman in his bunk before laughing. "And it looks like you've bored her to death."

Baltar was right. Kara had seemingly passed out at the bottom of his bunk.

"Appears as if you won't be spending the night with Lieutenant Thrace, either," Baltar said with a laugh as he walked out of the bunkroom and slapped the hatch closed.

"Want to bet?" Lee whispered to the closed door through gritted teeth. That man really bothered him, and it wasn't just because of how damn annoying he had become.

As soon as Lee was sure Dr. Baltar was gone, he let out a laugh and climbed the rungs back up to his bunk.

"Is he gone?" Kara whispered, her eyes still locked shut.

"Yes. I can't believe that trick works."

She opened her eyes and smiled sweetly at him. "It has since our Academy days. I'm surprised you still remembered it."

"I didn't," he said, sitting down on top of the blankets. "Not at first, at least. I just could tell you didn't really want to take that man home. You might be a screw-up, Kara, but you're not that bad."

She nodded and took another drink from the bottle of ambrosia which was back in her hand. "Yeah. I wanted to stay here with you."

"Now I really do know you're drunk."

"Contrary to what others may think, I actually do like spending time with you."

"Bullshit. You can barely talk to me these days without starting an argument or pointing out my shortcomings."

She looked hurt, and Lee immediately wished he could take his words back. He had only meant them jokingly.

"You really think that's the only reason I talk to you?"

"Come on. We haven't exactly been friends the past couple years."

"But that doesn't demote you to being only the CAG and the second best pilot in the Fleet." When he raised his eyebrows at her, she shrugged. "You're good, but you're not that good."

He nodded. "See? That's more like it."

"Lee. The point is you'll never just be the CAG and another pilot to me. I don't think it's possible to shove all you are into those two little categories." She took another drink from the bottle before shoving it towards him. "You're pretty much the only person I can rely on in this whole damn monster of a ship. Why do you think I'm always sticking my neck out for you to make sure that you're doing your job right? I need you to be stable so that I can have something to count on. Because if you screw up and something happens to you…" She stared at him for a moment before going on. "If something happens to you, then I don't have anyone left."

Before he could say anything in reply, she wrenched the bottle back from his hands, took another gulp, and surged. "And don't think I've forgotten for one second how frakked up it is that the brother of the man I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with is the one that I'm relying on. There are so many things wrong with that, but frankly, I don't care."

Another drink. "The world as we know it is over. Everyone keeps going on and on about being about to make a new start. How the world is new again and we can forget the past mistakes. Learn from the, but also forget them all the same."

Another drink. "And it got me thinking. Why can't we, you know? What's there that's holding us back? You're the only one I trust. The only stable thing in my life. I know how good you are for me. And I think that I have a right to want to stop screwing up. I think I've earned it. I've earned you."

She could see him looking at her intently, but she wasn't sure what he was thinking or whether he was just gauging her to see if she was telling him the truth. It had always made her uncomfortable when he did that. "Okay. That was probably the ambrosia talking. Sorry."

She went to shrug off the blankets and make her way out of his bunk but felt his hand reach out to grab her arm and stop her.

"I understand what you mean. But you have it easy. Try struggling to make the most temperamental, annoying, pain-in-the-ass pilot in the Fleet into something stable that you can count on."

Lee smiled as she avoided looking at him. Talking about how she felt had always made the boisterous Starbuck shy. But she did reach up to take his hand off of her arm and grasp it in hers. So he knew that she understood.

Things weren't easy, but why shouldn't they be able to have what they wanted in this age of rebirth?

After a moment, she turned to look into his eyes. He could tell that what she was about to say was probably extremely important. She might actually be vocalizing what they had been tiptoeing around since he showed up that day to talk to her in the brig. The prospect of finally having what he wanted made him nervous but in a good way.

Yeah. Definitely in a good way.

But at that moment, the hatch to the bunkroom slid open, breaking up whatever had been about to happen. Kara wrenched her hand away from his and ripped the curtain to his bunk closed.

"What do you think you're doing?" he whispered quietly.

"Do you know what they'll think if they catch me in your bunk when you look like that?" she said, gesturing to the fact that he was only wearing his standard military-issued boxers.

"Did you ever think that maybe it'll be worse when they see you stepping out of my bunk looking all disheveled? At least before it wouldn't have looked like we slept together. It is not like they are oblivious to the fact that you and I have had a previous relationship before I got marooned on Galactica."

She peeked through the small opening in the curtain. "Frak. It's half the Fleet."

"I guess you're going to have to ask me if you can sleep here," he said, stretching out and placing his hands behind his head. "Because if you haven't noticed, there really isn't that much room. So it's either ask or I'm just going to shove you out of her during the middle of the night. And it's a long drop to the bottom. Again, totally plausible considering it's not that big of a bed."

"There's enough to do what I want." He raised an eyebrow at her, and she glared. "I meant sleep."

Obviously he took pity on her predicament because he motioned for her to stay where she was and opened the curtain on his half of the bed slightly. "Hey, Cat. Could you grab me a couple tanks from my locker? It's really frakin' cold in here tonight."

The pilot nodded and, after walking over to Lee's locker, tossed him a few shirts.

Closing the curtain, he held them out to Kara. "Here. As pretty as it is to look at, I doubt you want to sleep in that thing."

She smiled at him and smoothed out a few wrinkles in her dress. "You liked it, huh?"

He rolled his eyes. "Just change so I can get some rest finally. I still have to fly about five hours."

Doing as he asked, she was halfway through the changing process when she noticed him intently staring at the top of the bunk. Lee, always the proper gentleman. Why for once couldn't he be a typical guy? Maybe it would be a little easier to let her impulses take over. Then at least she'd have something to blame her feelings on the next morning.

Lee stared up at the top of the bunk, willing her to finish soon. He didn't know how much more of this he could take. He was only human, and she was definitely one of the few women on board that would be worth the trouble of breaking the fraternization policy. Even if it pretty much screwed up the one good thing he had left in his life, it might be worth it. Why the frak was it taking so long?

"Done," she whispered.

Letting out a small nervous laugh at how close he had come to making a stupid, Starbuck, screw-up move, he slid up against the wall and motioned for her to join him. After a few moments of positioning and repositioning, they finally came to a rest with him lying on his back and she lying on her stomach, slightly on top of him, with her arm draped over his chest. It was an intimate position, but when you've been to hell and back with someone, it really isn't that awkward to have to be close.

Plus, neither one really minded it that much. Not that they would ever admit to it out loud.

"Apollo, sir."

The voice of one of his pilots made him tense up. Reaching across Kara, he stuck his head out of the curtain. "What did you need, Racetrack?"

"Well, I heard you moving around in there so I figured you were having trouble sleeping and I thought you should know that Starbuck hasn't made it back to the bunkroom yet. I know you told me to let you know when she did."

Lee chanced a glance down at Kara where she lay beneath him. She was doing her best not to laugh, and it wasn't really succeeding. Rolling his eyes, he turned his attention back to Racetrack. "I saw her earlier leaving with Dr. Baltar so she probably won't be back anytime soon if I know Starbuck."

He wanted to laugh at the look of surprise and… oh gods… was that disgust?… on Racetrack's face. Instead, he gave her a nod. "Good night."

"Night, sir."

Pulling the curtain closed, he lay back down against the wall.

"You didn't have to do that," Kara said quietly.

"Check up on you? I thought it only wise considering the presence of ambrosia and your previous history with impulsive acts. As much as you probably would have deserved it, I didn't want you to sit down in the brig all night, waiting for someone to pull some strings to get you out. And by someone, of course I mean myself."

She looked surprised. "Thanks."

"It's not a problem. It's part of my job."

"Not really. But I appreciate it anyways." She settled in against him and for a moment, there was a comfortable silence between them.

Lee shut his eyes and tried to forget what a strange night it had turned out to be. He had thought it would be just another tedious night of diplomatic relations and military protection. Instead, the world seemed to have flipped on end. Kara had shown up to the celebration in a dress. She had actually allowed him to dance with her. Then she had let Dr. Baltar try to take her back to his quarters.

Okay. Maybe that last one wasn't that out of the ordinary. She did have a track record with that kind of thing. A track record he tried his best to ignore, but one he was aware of all the same.

Still, if anyone had told him that by the end of the night he would wind up sharing a bunk with a slightly drunk Starbuck who happened to be wearing his clothing, he would have laughed in their face.

"That's not what I meant." Her voice broke him away from his thoughts. "When I said you didn't have to do that. That's not what I meant."

"Then what did you mean?"

"I meant you didn't have to tell them I went home with Dr. Baltar. Do you know how much work it's going to take to get the pilots to respect me again?"

Lee let out a fairly loud laugh before realizing how strange that would sound to the bunkroom. "Frak," he whispered and waited for someone out there to say something.

When nothing happened, he let himself relax. Which was precisely when Crashdown pulled the curtain back a few inches.

"Would you two keep it down? I would like to get some sleep before having to spend another day killing toasters. And to think I thought having the bunk underneath the CAG would give me a little peace and quiet."

Kara looked over at him sleepily. "Hey, Crash."

"Hey, Starbuck." He shook his head. "You look like shit."

"I feel like shit," she said before turning over to nestle against Lee again.

"Crashdown?" Lee said, calling the man's attention away from where Kara lay and back to him. "Can I ask you--"

"--to not say anything about this? Your secret's safe with me, sir. Besides, I'm looking forward to seeing how she can convince the rest of the pilots that she didn't sleep with Dr. Baltar. Because she sure can't tell them the truth about where she was."

Lee felt himself smiling as Crashdown disappeared out of view. He looked down at Kara where she lay snuggled up against him. His smile only got wider.

He had no idea when it had happened, but somewhere along the way, Galactica had become his home.

* * *

Two days later, Starbuck found herself in front of the President of the Twelve Colonies.

Laura Roslin was asking her to take the Cylon Raider back to whatever remained of Caprica in order to get some ancient artifact that had been shoved in a museum. She seemed convinced it would help them find the way to Earth. When Kara had objected that the Commander already knew where they were going, Roslin tried to persuade her that William Adama had lied to the Fleet.

"I don't believe that, sir. Even if I did, that wouldn't change my answer."

"And that answer would be?"

"A respectful no, sir."

She fidgeted impatiently as Roslin silently stared at her.

"Fine. You are dismissed, Lieutenant Thrace. And this conversation is not to leave this room." The President must have realized that she couldn't talk her into changing her mind.

"It won't, sir."

"And if you change your mind?"

"I'll let you know."

Kara gave a smile and a nod before opening the hatch and sliding out of the room.

So, maybe Roslin had been telling her the truth. Maybe the Old Man had lied to the Fleet about finding Earth. She wouldn't be happy with it, but he must have had his reasons. William Adama knew how to take care of his men. She could understand Roslin trying to diminish her faith in the man that she followed. Obviously, Roslin believed strongly that finding this Arrow of Apollo was what the Fleet needed.

Kara could respect a woman who knew what she wanted and would do anything, within reason, to make it happen. She could relate to that in a lot of ways.

On any other day, the President's persuasion tactics probably would have worked. Taking away her belief in the Commander would have made her do any number of rash actions. But Roslin had forgotten one little thing. Something she herself hadn't realized she had until just recently.

She had the stability of Lee Adama to rely on.

And while she still had that, she wasn't about to do anything stupid. She was getting tired of screwing up all the good things in her life. First Zak. Then her knee. She didn't want Lee to be the next on that list.

Plus, he had thrown down a challenge to her that night he had hid her away in his bunk. He might not have realized it at the time, but he had. And she was never one to turn down a challenge, no matter how hard.

That was pretty much all she could remember from that night. Stupid ambrosia.

So, here she was. Doing the rational thing. Trying to do something she had never been able to do since she could remember.

Kara was bound and determined to prove that she could be stable for him, too.

At least she was pretty sure she could.

If she tried really hard.

And if he forgave her when she screwed up a few times in the beginning.

And if she didn't let her temper get in her way.

And if she didn't let little things like triad or piloting or purposefully getting on his nerves get in her way.

Frak. This was going to be hard.


	2. Varying Degrees of Stability: Part 1

Kara Thrace stalked her way through the corridors of Galactica. Anyone who chanced to glance her way was met with a chilly glare and a few colorful words. She was not having a good day, and it could all be attributed to a certain Adama and the special way he had of fraking up with her life.

She had been slowly making her way to the only place she knew she could get the answers she needed, but in the back of her head, she found herself wishing there was another way. It was always so hard to talk to him. And she was a little fired up right now. She wasn't sure she could control what came out of her mouth.

The hatchway door loomed in front of her as she realized that she had gone as far as she could. It was now or never. Sighing, she forced herself to take a few deep breaths to push her emotional side back down. She needed to approach this in a calm manner. Otherwise, she would get nothing achieved.

"Please tell me what the frak you think you're doing!" she yelled as she slammed the door shut behind her. "Because there is no way in hell that you still have your sanity if you're going to let this bullshit happen."

"Lieutenant Thrace," William Adama said, giving her his usual stony look as he leaned back in his chair and set the papers in his hands down on the desk. "To what do I owe the honor of such a colorful outburst?"

"You know why I'm here. How could you approve him to go on that death trap of a mission?"

"Does no one understand the importance of secrecy when it comes to secret missions anymore?" Adama said, shaking his head. "I don't want to know how many people besides you are aware of this mission."

"It's only me. I overheard the President talking with Billy a few minutes ago. I couldn't believe what they were saying at the time. I mean, it makes no sense. No sense at all!"

Adama motioned for her to take a seat. "You need to calm down and take a moment to remember the chain of command on this ship. I have my reasons, Kara. I don't make decisions without being sure they are the right ones to make at the time."

She slumped down into the seat and bit her lip to keep in the pout that wanted so desperately to come out. "But he's your own son, sir."

"And that's why he should be the one to go home. I need someone I trust to do this for the Fleet."

"I could do it," she suggested quietly. "And that way you don't have to risk losing him now that he's finally starting to treat Galactica like home."

"Need I remind you that you turned down this assignment once already?"

Kara winced. "She told you about that?"

"President Roslin saw it fit to let me know how important she thought this mission was." Adama's eyes bore into her as his next sentence came out. "And she also saw it important to let me know how loyal a pilot I have in you, Kara."

Kara bowed her head in embarrassment a little. The least President Roslin could have done was tell her their little secret conversation was going public. "Sir, I did what I thought I had to do. I couldn't just follow the visions of a self-proclaimed prophet when it was risking everything I've worked so hard to gain. I have a family here. And they need me."

"Yes, we do, I'm afraid."

"Sir?"

Adama took a deep breath and gave her a reassuring smile. "I think sometimes that Galactica depends on you a little too much. Which is another reason why I'm sending Lee back to Caprica."

"I don't understand."

"The Fleet needs to see that you're not the only good pilot we have. Each and every person stationed on this ship can be just as resourceful and light in the air as the great Starbuck."

Kara could feel her cheeks break out in a blush and hoped that the Commander would not notice. "Sir, I think the Fleet realizes that they have a good pilot and a good CAG in Apollo. I don't think you need to send him into some kind of exile just to get people to admit it."

"Why are you fighting so hard to protect him, Kara?" Adama asked abruptly, pulling his glasses off his face. He pushed his chair back and stood to look down at her.

"I just think it's a waste to send him on this mission, sir. There's a lot of places he would be more useful than crammed into the guts of a Cylon Raider."

"Maybe you should tell him that. For now, I've approved it. It's done."

Kara knew when she was being dismissed and stood up slowly. "Thank you for your time."

Adama reached across the desk and grasped her hand. "Don't get me wrong, Kara. I'm immensely worried about him. I have faith in his abilities, but I'm still his father. In a perfect circumstance, I would send you both to retrieve the Arrow of Apollo. You two seem so invincible when you're together, it's uncanny. But we do not live in perfect circumstances."

Her mind flashed to all the trials and hardships she personally had to fight her way through in the past few months. "No, we do not."

They stood a moment, hand in hand, before Kara worked up the nerve to speak again. "Can I ask you a question, Commander?" When Adama gave her a small nod, she continued, "What is the Fleet to do while we wait for Apollo to return?"

"We need to figure out a way to explore what is down on Kobol. The President seems to think the Tomb of Athena is down there and that when we get the Arrow, it will be able to point the way to Earth. It would be most advantageous if we knew where the Tomb was long before Lee comes back to us."

Kara stared at him a moment, surprised that he was being so open with things he had longed kept hidden. The President had told her that Commander Adama didn't know the way to Earth, and the things he was saying lately seemed to indicate truth in that statement. He was putting a lot of stock in the prophecies Roslin seemed to think would lead them to Earth. Almost as if they had no other option, really.

"You really think we need this Arrow to find our way to Earth?"

The weight of her question hung in the air as they both realized that now was the moment where he would either admit or deny his mistake. The Commander stared at Kara before nodding curtly. "Sometimes we need the help of the gods to make it through the day," he answered cryptically.

"So we're just to wait until Lee returns before we can make another step? Normal CAPs and patrols? Maybe a few special reconnaissance type flights around the planet for those of us that get a little stir-crazy, staying in one place?"

"You're awfully curious about what will be occupying the time when Apollo is away, Kara."

She had known he would be suspicious of her question and had come up with a back-up reasoning to hid the truth behind her words. "Well, I personally think it might get a little boring around here without him. And I take it I'm going to have a temporary promotion to CAG while he's gone. I guess I'm just trying to take this prophecy thing seriously."

Adama laughed and released her hand. "Go get some sleep, Kara. You look like you need it."

"Thank you, sir."

Kara sent him one last smile before opening the hatch and stepping out into the corridor. The bunkroom wasn't far away, and she was due for a little rack time after taking out a fraking Cylon Basestar all by her lonesome only hours earlier. And she had even brought the damn Raider back in one piece! Didn't that call for a little break from the constant rush of worry and guilt and anger?

She was so damn tired, physically and emotionally, of playing these games. It was so fraking tempting. Two stairways and about a hundred yards and she would be nestled into her rack, trying to drown out the noise of the other pilots. It sounded divine.

She shook her head slightly. No, there were more important things to be done. With only a twinge of sadness, Kara tried to forget how tired she was as she began to walk in the opposite direction of the bunkroom. She didn't have much time.


	3. Varying Degrees of Stability: Part 2

Lee Adama stood outside the main doors to one of the side hangar bays. It was out of the way and only used when the majority of the ship's smaller crafts had to make combat landings. On that note, the only ships that took off from it were those that did not want to be seen.

Like the Cylon Raider that had been moved to the hangar bay earlier that night without anyone's knowledge but for a select few.

Lee knew once he had stepped inside the doorway, there was no backing out of it. But then there was really no choice when it all came down to it. His father and President Roslin had asked him to put his life on the line for the good of all humanity. He couldn't turn them down.

With that said, this was not how he had envisioned returning home. In his dreams, he had imagined defeating the Cylons and returning to his home planet of Caprica to see that it had barely been touched. The bombs would have caused damage, but it would be nothing that they could not repair in time. Things… home… life… could be fixed if he tried hard enough.

Sighing, he looked down at his watch. In about ten minutes, there would be a small window of time in which Lieutenant Gaeta and his father kept the CIC's attentions away from the launch screens. Dee would ignore his comm traffic as he acknowledged he was away. And then he would be dropping in behind the CAP to jump to Caprica. Quite a lot had been sacrificed in planning this little flight.

"Better get started then, Adama," he whispered to himself as he pushed the hangar door open. A quick glance around told him that there was no one there. He absentmindedly checked to make sure he had his two guns holstered tightly to his side and moved to zip the lightly camouflage jacket he had donned for this mission.

His hands paused in their zipping as he turned the corner near the Raider and realized that the hangar bay was not as deserted as he had been told it would be. He took in the sight of the best combat pilot he had ever seen as she sat delicately perched on top of a cargo box, her knees pulled up for her chin to rest on. She was wearing similar clothing to his and looked rather nervous about something.

"What are you doing here, Kara?" he asked as he pulled to a stop in front of where she sat.

Kara gave him a small smile as she let her feet stretch out to touch the ground. "Waiting for you actually."

"Come to give me one hell of a goodbye kiss, then?"

"Not likely," she said with a laugh, standing up. "I'm coming with you."

That was what he was afraid she would say. "You're not."

"I am."

"Kara, there is no way that my father and President Roslin approved both of us to go on this mission."

"They didn't."

"Then you're not going."

"I am." She looked down at her wrist. "And if my watch is correct, we have about seven minutes to get in that Raider and get it powered up. You know, Lee, I didn't realize you even knew how to fly this thing."

"I learned," he said shortly. When she made a move to start walking over to the Raider, he grabbed her shoulder roughly and hauled her back to look him in the eye. His fingers dug into her arm as he pulled her over to the side of the hangar bay, and she did her best not to wince when the back of her head hit the wall. "What are you playing at, Kara?"

"I'm trying to be that stable person you can count on, Lee," she whispered, only half mocking. "You're taking an enemy ship into enemy territory and hoping that you can make it back alive. The odds aren't in your favor. You need me with you, so here I am."

"I can do this on my own."

"Six minutes," she said, glancing down at where his hand still held her arm before looking back up at him. "And counting."

"This is desertion, Kara. You will be brought up on charges when we get back."

"See? That's exactly what I'm talking about. You can't tell me that about five minutes ago you weren't having doubts that you would ever see Galactica again. But now the focus is on what things will be like when we get back. Don't you understand? If I'm with you, you know that we're coming back. That is the reason why I have to come with you."

"I can't let you get inside that Raider."

"I'm not going to let you get inside by yourself, so it looks like we have a slight problem. Though, what you should be focusing on right now isn't that. The simple fact of the matter is if you keep refusing to let me in that ship, you won't be able to leave on your secret mission. And it won't be secret anymore if you don't leave soon. So you need to decide. Either go on the mission with me or don't go on the mission at all." She saw Lee's eyes briefly dart to the phone on the wall next to them. "You don't have time to call anyone, Lee. This decision is all on your shoulders. So what's it going to be? Do you feel like being a hero today?"

He let go of her arm and stepped back to glare at her. "I can't take you with me."

Kara gave him a weak smile and reached up to touch his cheek lightly. She hoped that her words weren't too harsh for him. Really she was only staying strong on this because she knew he needed her there. "You have no choice. I know what's going on inside that brain of yours. There's no way you are going to let this mission fail. People are counting on you."

Lee stared at her as she walked back to where the Raider stood and slid underneath its belly. She could be so damn frustrating when she set her mind to doing something. He felt the corners of his mouth quirk up in a slight smile. That had always been one of the things he liked most about her.

Sighing, he accepted his fate and moved to kneel down beside her. "So, how do you think two of us are going to fit in that thing?"

"I've been in there before. There's room. It's just going to be a tight fit." She turned to look him up and down with a smirk on her face before settling back to looking him in the eyes. "But I think you and I have been in spaces just as small before. We'll manage."

Lee nodded and pulled himself up into the underbelly of the Raider. The Chief had done all he could, but the thing still smelled like a latrine that hadn't been cleaned in years. He settled himself in to one side of the ship before reaching his hand down to help pull Kara in beside him.

She had been right. It was a tight fit, but they managed after a few seconds of struggle. Her right side snuggled in next to him, and he only found himself resting over her a little. All in all, it was almost like another night in the bunkroom when Kara had a nightmare and couldn't make herself stop shaking in fear.

Lee reached his arm over her shoulder to type a few commands into the newly installed hard drive of the Raider. It shuddered a little as the power kicked on and picked it up a few feet off the flight deck.

Almost on cue, the piece of decking the Raider was parked on began to retract down into the ship. Within seconds, the two pilots found themselves staring down the long tunnel of a flight tube that was conveniently vacant at this time of night.

"You're going to have to do most of the flying," he said. "I'm not in the right position."

"Not a problem," Kara replied with a hint of glee. She had missed piloting this piece of machinery.

The determination in her voice soothed Lee slightly. Reaching down, he pulled the comm earpiece into his ear and shifted so that Kara could move her feet back into position. Her hair briefly brushed across his face, and he felt a small moan fall from his lips.

"What was that?" Kara asked, turning to narrow her eyes at him.

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Your hair smells good."

Her face lit up in a smile. "Oh."

Lee tried to ignore how he was suddenly tuned it to the closeness of their bodies in this extremely small space as Kara shifted her body in order to do her job. The ship bucked as she dug her heels into the sides with a squish, and a look of repulsion crossed her face. She punched a button on the console, and the ship picked up a maddening amount of speed

"Galactica, Apollo…" His voice faded off as he looked over at his unintentional co-pilot. "…and Starbuck away."

Lee could hear the sound of Dee choking back her surprise reverberate over the comm and prayed that his father would not be too angry at the woman currently lying halfway beneath him. "Take us home," he whispered in Kara's ear.

Smiling, she punched a few keys and the familiar sensation of the FTL drive engaging hit Lee's stomach like a gentle nagging. Lee heard the sounds of the CAP as they realized that the Raider had been launched from the belly of Galactica. And then the world dropped out and they were gone.


	4. Varying Degrees of Stability: Part 3

Kara stared out at the space that held the world she had called home for all her life except for those few precious years she had spent on Picon. This was home. "It looks the same."

"It's not," Lee said, ever the serious one. "There was a nuclear holocaust a little while back, remember?"

"It still looks the same."

"Just head down towards that cloud formation, Kara. We need to land by the Delphi Museum. That's the last known location of the Arrow."

"You actually think this important key to our continued survival hasn't been destroyed by the Cylons? That they haven't even touched it in all the time we've been gone?"

"I don't think they know its importance. It's just one measly tool in one of our scriptures. They can't know about how our lives are shaping up to follow the Book of Pythia. Well, at least, they can't since we got rid of Leoben and Doral."

Kara fell silent as she thought that over. Who were they to say there still wasn't another Cylon in the Fleet relaying information back to others? Her mind caught on that thought. Why did she keep imagining the location of the so-called hub of the Cylons was Caprica? She suddenly became really afraid that it hadn't been so stupid for her to force Lee to take her along with him. He might actually need her to stay alive through this one.

"You're going to need to decelerate if you don't want to become a mass of metal and blood all over our old home."

Kara snapped out of it to see that he was right. They were almost to the ground, and she had barely begun the landing maneuvers. "Sorry. Lot to think about coming back here, you know."

"Yeah." She could feel his reassuring tone kick in. "It's going to be hard."

"Yeah."

"But I have you and you have me. I think that's more than we could ask for."

"Don't be sappy," she said as the Raider floated in space a few seconds before there was the familiar thump of ground meeting metal. They both stared out the narrow slit carved out of the metal in front of them. It was foggy and bright outside. Exactly how Caprica should be at this time of year.

Kara looked up at Lee to watch his reaction to being home and wasn't surprised to see him transfixed. She had always imagined coming home to Caprica one day. She knew that Lee had dreamed the same thing even if he never hinted to it. The only difference being she knew her dreams were never as detailed as his would have been. Lee Adama would dream of returning to this planet with a plan on how to change it back to the home he remembered. She, on the other hand, didn't know what she would do when it was time to return. In her mind, she hadn't thought that far ahead.

The only detail she had ever imagined was the small fact that when she returned home, he would be at her side. Staring up at him as he continued to look out at the world, she smiled. Mission accomplished.

Lee chose that moment to look down at her and caught the large grin plastered across her face. "What is it?"

"You're a good traveling companion, Lee."

"You don't say?"

"Yeah." Kara leaned in to sniff his neck slowly. There was a layer of sweat and the slight tang of the Cylon goo on the surface, but he still smelled like she had always remembered. "And you smell good."

Lee gave her a smile before pushing the bottom hatch open without warning, and Kara felt herself slid right out of the Raider. At least she knew that was one thing the goo was good for. It kept her from having to stay inside one second more than necessary. She rolled out from under the machine and waited for Lee to join her. When he had, she waved her hand in front of her. "Delphi Museum."

He pushed past her and started walking up the stairs. "Do you remember all the school field trips we had to take to this place when we were younger?"

"Let me guess. You studied the plaques telling of the gods and their journey while the rest of your class got into fights over who could make the most Arrow of Apollo jokes."

"And you were the one who always won that little contest, right?"

"If we were still counting, I'd be winning." She gave him a sly look out of the corner of her eyes as they entered the museum. "I mean, I do actually know an Apollo now so it gives the joke so much more meaning."

Their boots clicked against the tile floor as they hastily made their way through the halls of ancient artifacts. Kara held her hand at her hip where one of her guns was holstered. She kept expecting a Cylon to pop out at every turn. Her eyes came into focus as they turned out of a dark corridor into a large, well-lit room. "This doesn't look familiar. Are you sure you know where this thing is?"

"Come on, Kara. You just said I was the nerdy kid studying the maps and plaques."

"Stupid me. Of course you know where we're going," she said with a roll of her eyes and kept walking.

"One more turn," Apollo said as he pulled her down another corridor. He stopped mid-stride after only a few steps.

Kara bumped into him fully but managed to keep her balance. Sighing, she tried to see around his body. "Cylon?"

He ignored the whisper in his ear and continued to stare at whatever had made him pause.

"What the frak is it, Lee?"

"The Arrow," he said with a laugh. "It's actually there."

"And no Cylons around," Kara said, pushing out from behind him. The small bump to his shoulder was only partially an accident, she told herself. He was starting to infuriate her with all the little ways he was keeping her just out of the action.

"Kara! Would you wait?" he hissed, running to catch up to her. "They could have been tracking us this whole time, waiting for our guards to go down."

"I don't care. I just want to grab that stupid thing and go home. Let them try to attack me now that my goal's in sight."

"You really are on a mission."

"I'm trying to be reliable. Is it working?" she asked as she paused in front of the glass case.

"No. You're just being a nuisance. By the way, what is your little obsession all the sudden about being useful to me?" When she didn't respond, he let it drop, and they returned to their silent staring at the object of their desire.

"Fraking nuclear explosions everywhere and one simple glass case doesn't bust?" she muttered, shaking her head. She looked around for something to use, and her eyes finally came to rest on a long piece of metal on the ground by her feet.

"They're going to hear that," Lee scolded as she picked up the metal.

"Then we'll just have to snatch and run." She looked down at the weapon in her hands and then back up at the glass case. "Really, really fast."

"Don't you want to think this out?"

"No." She grasped the metal tightly and swung out at the glass. Just as Lee said, there was a resounding boom and then the crash as thousands of pieces of glass hit the marble floor. He didn't take time to relish the thought that he had been right, though. Instead, he pushed past Kara and vaulted up into the case.

Lee grasped the arrow in his hand, surprised to feel it give way immediately. The marble hand of Apollo had seemed like it had a good hold on the Arrow. It was almost ridiculous how the long piece of metal had practically jumped into his hand. He really didn't have time to wonder about the mythological meaning of that any more than he already had. They had already delayed too long.

"Got it," he said, hopping down next to where she still stood.

"Running time?"

"Running time."

The two took off and immediately synchronized themselves into the same stride. They were so familiar with one another that the pace was pressing but nothing either one of them couldn't handle. Kara let Lee take the lead seeing as how he knew this place so well. Plus he seemed determined to want to protect her.

They were ten feet from their exit when Kara felt her foot catch on something and fell to the ground. Lee turned to help her up, but he immediately paused when he saw a man holding a gun to her head. Ignoring what his military training told him to do, he followed his gut instincts and drew his own firearm out, pointing it at the back of the man's head. It figured that they would run into a Cylon when they were so close to being home free.

"I don't know who you are, but I will kill you without a second thought if you don't put that gun down," Lee hissed.

"I can't believe the two of you are Cylons. When the Old Man finds out, he's going to be going through hell having his whole family destroyed."

Lee's hold of his gun slipped a little at the man's words. Who was this guy that he was so calmly spouting off the nickname all of Galactica had for his father? His heart froze as he realized that this guy might actually be one of the people stationed on the ship. Right in front of them the whole time had been a Cylon.

"Frak off, Helo. We're not Cylons," Kara said as she pulled herself to her feet. "And I am going to kill you if that tumble gives me bruises."

Lee's mind immediately went back to the memory of Boomer's old ECO, the one she had left behind on Caprica. He had only known him a day or two before the whole holocaust had happened. "Lieutenant Agathon?" The man turned to look him in the eye, and Lee realized it really was him.

"Sir," Helo said, still pointing his gun out to where Kara rested against the wall.

"If that really is you, Lieutenant, you need to put down that gun."

"Is that an order?"

"Yes, and seeing as how I'm a Captain and you're obviously not dead, it's from your superior officer."

"Even with all things considered, I can't do that, sir," Helo said, still staring at Kara. "I'm really not sure what two of the good guys would be doing on a Cylon-infested planet. And until I do, I'm staying armed."

"You're such a fraking idiot," Kara hissed, glaring at him defiantly.

"You're not helping, Kara," Lee scolded. He flinched when he saw some sort of realization come across Helo's face as the words came out of his mouth. He had obviously slipped up, and he had a pretty good idea how. Both of them had always had trouble sticking to call signs only when in the field. "Please put down your gun, Lieutenant."

"Sorry but no, I don't think so. I got to protect myself here. So I am going to give you two seconds to convince me that you're not a toaster before I kill her. And you better believe that once she's dead, I will kill you, too."

His harsh words made Kara's eyes go wide. This was not the Helo she remembered. He would never make a threat like that. She didn't have time to dwell on the changes in her old friend because the next sound she heard was the safety on Lee's gun being released. He looked even more pissed off than Helo.

"You won't have a chance," Lee hissed.

"Yeah," Kara said with a laugh. It was always fun to watch Lee get mad even if the chance that she might die hung in the air. "You shoot at me and he'll have you down within half a second. So stop being stupid, Helo."

"That's not what I mean," Lee said. Kara turned her attention away from her old comrade to look at the man she had come on this mission with. He was staring intently at Helo, almost as if he was going to kill him with just the power of his eyes. Intense. "I meant you won't have a chance to kill her. Because I will kill you long before you can even think about pulling that trigger."

Kara's heart fluttered a little as Lee's protectiveness reared its beautifully, fraked-up head. She really loved it when he got like this. But she didn't have time to bask. "Helo, we came here to get the Arrow of Apollo. The Fleet needs it if we're going to find Earth."

"Starbuck would never do something as stupid as return to this place," Helo replied. It was obvious that the stress of the situation was breaking him slightly. He didn't sound so sure of himself anymore.

"She didn't. In fact, she turned down the mission." Lee lowered his gun a little as he took a step closer to the man in front of him. "But she couldn't resist playing the role of protector when I told President Roslin that I would do it."

"President Roslin?" Helo said, turning his attention away from Kara. "Who the frak is that?"

Kara took the opportunity to whip the gun out of his hand and turned it around to face him. "You've missed a lot while you were dead." She gave him a small shrug. "We have a woman for president now. She's kind of good at it, too, considering she used to be the Secretary of Education."

Helo stared in awe as she looked the gun over before holding it out for him to take back. "I don't get it."

"Whole lot of world got destroyed in the attacks, Karl. There's less than fifty thousand of us left now. We formed up a Fleet to try to make our way to the thirteenth colony. That's why Apollo and I are here. We came back on a mission to save humanity. We were on our way out when you decided to attack. You are such a moron for doing that by the way. The only saving grace you have is no Cylon has stumbled upon our little altercation."

"There are no Cylons around the museum. I would know."

"Oh really?" Apollo said, holstering his gun. "How exactly would you know? Because last I checked, humans didn't have Cylon radar. Are you a Cylon, Helo?"

"Frak you," he said.

A small noise pulled all their attentions to the end of the corridor. Kara's eyes widened in horror as she saw one of her best friends standing there, looking like she had been through hell. And it suddenly hit home what the Old Man had meant when he said that the Cylons could be anyone.

She let a heart wrenching yell loose as she pulled the gun right back out of Helo's hands and aimed it at the woman she had always known as Sharon Valerii.

"No!" Helo screamed, pushing Kara back into the wall. He gripped her wrist tightly with his fingers until the pressure made her drop the gun "You can't do that, Kara."

"She's a machine, Karl," Kara hissed at him.

"It's more complicated than that. She's carrying my child." The desperation and pain of what her friend must have been going through alone here on Caprica resonated in his eyes. "She's a Cylon but I love her, Kara. So you can't kill her."

Kara's eyes shifted to something past his shoulder and a wicked smile slid across her face. "Not a problem. Because I don't have to."

The shots reverberated through the corridor as Lee opened fire on the woman standing a hundred feet away. Helo pushed Kara to the ground and launched himself at Lee. The two men landed in a heap, both looking up just in time to see Boomer turning the corner at the end of the corridor.

"Frak!" Kara yelled, pulling herself to her feet. "She's going to take our ride, Apollo."

Lee punched Helo in the gut to get the pilot to stop struggling to hold him down. When Helo's grip loosened, Lee pushed him to the side, and, with a grunt, he limped in the direction Kara had run off. Something had shifted in his leg when Helo flung them to the ground, but he didn't have time to focus on the pain right now.

When he caught up to Kara, he found her standing in the open doorway to the museum, not moving. He shuffled to her side and stared out at the still present Cylon Raider.

"Where did she go?"

Kara looked up at him, almost as if noticing he was there for the first time. "I don't know. Those toasters are fast." She turned her attention back to the Raider. "She didn't take it, though. What do you think that means?"

"It means she isn't stupid," Helo hissed from behind them. The two pilots turned to look at him inquisitively. "That Raider isn't useful to you anymore."

"It's our ride home," Lee said, a confused look plastered across his face.

"Not anymore," Kara whispered, understanding dawning on her. She walked over to stand in front of Helo. "Because we have you."

"Sharon knows you won't leave me behind."

"So then why didn't she take the Raider if it was so useless?"

"I don't know," Helo said, shaking his head. "I don't understand much about her."

"You understood enough to know she was a machine and still you fraked her," Kara spit at him, glaring intently. "You knew enough to know she seems to have some sort of plan. Why were you at the museum anyway, Helo?"

"We've been on the run from the Cylons for days now. She said it would be safe."

"Convenient," Kara said. "You just happen to be at the Delphi Museum when Lee and I show up. You just happen to trip me, thinking that two of the best pilots left in the world are actually toasters. You just happen to make it impossible for us to get off this planet the way we had planned." She inched her way closer so that he could feel her breath on him. "You never answered Apollo's question, Karl. Are you a Cylon?"

"No," he grunted through clenched teeth.

Kara looked back at Lee. "So, none of us are Cylons. None of us have a way home. And none of us are stupid enough to think the Cylons aren't coming for us right this minute. So what do we do now, fearless leader?"

"There's a military base a few miles from here in the woods," Lee said, finally placing his gun back in the holster. "We get there and we might be able to find a Raptor that still works."

"Plan B," she said with a small shake of her head. "Figures you'd have one already cooked up."

"The Cylons have control of that base," Helo pointed out. "They have control of everything. Otherwise, I would have been off this planet weeks ago."

"It doesn't matter what the Cylons have control of. It's our only option. I'm not going to waste time running around this planet when I could be stealing a ship from underneath their noses," Lee said with a leer. "And since Kara seems mighty attached to you, you're coming with us."

"I'm not leaving Sharon behind."

Kara shook her head. "She left you behind without a thought. You know why? Because she's not human. She doesn't have our weakness for making attachments. Take a lesson from her. Check your pathetic excuse for love at the door and follow us home, Helo."

Both men watched in awe as Kara started walking down the stairs away from the museum.

"She hasn't changed," Helo said finally with a laugh.

Lee turned to look at him and felt a small smile escape. "Did you expect her to?"

Without another word, both men started following her.


	5. Varying Degrees of Stability: Part 4

Lee watched Kara as she kept a good ten feet in front of them throughout their whole trek. There was something on her mind, but she wasn't volunteering what it was. He wanted to take the easy route and say it had something to do with her realizing that Sharon Valerii was never her friend. But she wasn't acting right if that was the case.

If she was upset about Sharon, she would be digging at Helo for the obvious mistakes he had made when it came to the Cylon in question. She would be taunting Lee about anything and everything she could think of. She would be feisty. She would be upset. She would probably have punched one of the two men trailing her by now.

No, it was something a whole lot bigger than simply a friend turning out to be a traitor.

Giving Helo one last glance, he jogged the few feet to catch up to Kara. "Do you want to talk about something?"

"No. What would give you that idea?"

"The fact that you're not talking." She gave him a funny look. "It might be crazy logic, but it's true. When something's upsetting you, you tend to pull away."

"I'm fine."

"You didn't have to go through all this, Kara. You chose to."

"I know, Lee."

"It has to be hard, knowing that you chose to put yourself through this."

"Not helping, Lee."

Lee bit his bottom lip and hoped she would forgive him. He was running out of options on how to get her to talk, and this was the only one he could think of to try.

With a small grunt, he pushed her into the doorway of a nearby building. He grasped both of her wrists in one of his hands as he used all his body weight to pin her to the wall. He could hear her wince under the pressure building between them.

"What the frak do you think you're doing?" she snarled.

He was about to respond when he realized that he didn't really have much of an answer for her. "I don't know. Would you kill me if I said that usually when I get physical with you, you open up?"

She rolled her eyes and pulled her knee up to connect with his abdomen. He grunted in pain and immediately let go of his hold on her. "How's that for physical?" she hissed in his ear before pulling herself away from him. "You are so fraking stupid sometimes. You know that right?"

Pulling himself back together, he tried to look on the bright side as he limped quickly to catch up with her. The pain in his gut was outshining the steady pain that had been growing in his leg for the past few hours.

"Hey! Before you two start a fistfight and break each other's jaws making it impossible to talk, does either of you know where we're going?" Helo yelled from his position behind them.

"Yes!" they both snarled at the same time. Lee and Kara both snapped around to look at the other in surprise, and Kara couldn't hold back a small giggle. Typical. They always settled down quickly after a disagreement. The physical violence seemed to have a calming influence on their tempers.

They walked in silence a few yards before Lee grabbed her arm to pull her to a stop. "I do know where we're going, Kara. Which is why I thought you might want to talk."

"It's nothing. Just a small stop to pick up a few things. Like weapons that might keep us from being killed when we assault that military base."

"This isn't about weapons," Lee whispered as he let go of her arm and they continued on. "We both know it."

Kara didn't respond. He figured she wouldn't.

Helo caught up to them just around the time that Kara turned to the right to push her way through an opening in a chain link fence. "I don't think that's where they keep the Raptors," he said sarcastically, even though he followed this new move.

"She kept a place in Delphi," Lee said as if that explained everything.

Kara wasn't surprised that her door only took one swift kick before flying open. She had had the military and the civilian police kick it down before. She knew that it really wasn't that strong. Then again, you didn't really need a strong door when you didn't stay in your own place most nights.

Helo stared around at the walls as he took in the scratched black lines which formed words amid the earthy splashes of paint. "Did you paint this, Kara?" he asked. "You paint?"

Lee grabbed his arm and pulled him to the side of the stairwell. "Leave her alone for a few minutes. She needs to exercise some demons."

Helo gestured at a canvas leaning against the wall of the landing. It had been slashed rather thoroughly. "Obviously," he said with a huff.

Lee stared at the canvas, remembering the day she had gone at it with a knife. Zak had only been dead for two weeks. "No. Those aren't the demons she has to face right now." Music started to filter through the apartment as Kara turned on the stereo that was beside her bed. "Those are the demons," he whispered.

Pushing past Helo, Lee made his way down to where she stood, stopping only briefly to pick a jacket up off of a table. He placed his hand on Kara's shoulder and held the jacket out to her when she turned to face him. "You know we can't stay."

She nodded. "I just wanted to hear."

"I know," he said.

Helo suddenly felt like an intruder on a moment that was intensely personal. Obviously there was a lot he had never known about Starbuck. And it was painfully clear that most of it was already known by the other man in the room. He remembered something Kara had said to him during a triad game what seemed like a millennium ago. "We all have our secrets," he whispered as he watched Lee slowly pull Kara away from the stereo.

Her eyes looked up to meet his, and he suddenly saw all the pain that was bundled up inside her. He knew that his face must have shown his sudden concern for her because she stiffened up and her eyes turned cold again.

"The guns we need are in my car," Kara said as she shrugged away from Lee. It was time for her to focus and be strong again. She reached into the pocket of the jacket he had given her and pulled out a set of keys. "We can grab them and then get the hell off this planet."

"Sounds like a plan," Helo said, starting back up the stairs.

"Karl?" Kara's voice made him pause and look back down at her. "We all make mistakes."

He nodded and began to make his way up out onto the streets again.

"What was that?" Lee asked as they began following Helo.

Kara turned to look at him. "He's scared. He doesn't think she's going to come back."

"And you suddenly decided to show sympathy?"

"He loves someone he can't have. I get that." If she held his gaze for a second too long after saying that, neither one of them would point it out.

As they made it back to the top of the stairs and stepped into the sunlight of Caprica, she squinted and looked over at him. "We never talked about Colonial Day, Lee. About what happened that night."

"I know. We will…"

"When the world doesn't need saving," she finished for him. "Isn't that always our excuse?"

"Fine," he said with a laugh. "We'll talk about it on the flight home then. Would that suit you better?"

Kara was about to answer him when she saw the odd sight directly ahead of them. Helo was just standing in the middle of the street, not moving. She would have thought he was simply waiting for them if his back wasn't turned to them and his hands weren't in the air. That's when she heard the click of a safety being released right next to her ear.

"Sorry, princess. You're not going anywhere."

Kara could feel Lee move even before she registered what was going on. Within seconds, though, she caught sight of the two women straight ahead holding their guns on Helo and felt the presence of the man who was now pointing a gun to the back of her head. Lee had sprung into action, though, and was in turn pointing his gun at the man behind her. She knew what the next move would be. Lee never did like to play this game alone.

"I don't think you want to die today," Lee taunted as he clicked the safety off.

The man turned his attention to say something back, and that was the only opening Kara needed to bring her gun into play. The man's gaze wrenched back to her as she raised her gun in the air.

"Looks like you're outnumbered," she said, giving him a sweet smile.

"Not from where I'm standing."

Kara saw movement out of the corner of her eyes and noted the two burly men who stepped out from behind the cover of the buildings around them to train their guns on her. Almost like clockwork, Lee pulled the other gun out of his jacket and trained both of his weapons on the two new players.

"Always got to protect me," Kara said with a laugh.

"It's my job to watch your back."

"Do you two not realize that you have weapons that are capable of killing you currently pointed at your hearts?" hissed the man intent on shooting them both.

"We've done this before," Kara said. "It's not so scary when you know you're going to win. Because we are going to win."

"What do you want to do with them, Boss?" screamed one of the women holding her gun at Helo. "I vote we kill those two so they shut up and then try to get some information out of this one." She poked her gun into Helo's side, causing him to wince even though he didn't move an inch.

"She doesn't particularly like your kind," the man said with a laugh.

"And what kind would that be?"

"The kitchen appliance kind."

Kara let out a short laugh. "You know, you're the second person who has mistaken me for a Cylon today. I'm starting to wonder if you all know something I don't. What do you think, Apollo? Could I be a Cylon?"

"It would explain why no one can seem to kill you, Starbuck. Gods know I've tried."

"Starbuck and Apollo?" the man said with a laugh. "You have to be kidding me. Those are your names? I thought you usually got saddled with numbers like Six or Ten."

"Those are our call signs, you moron," Kara said. "And I'm sure that your name is so much better. Let me guess. You probably have some name from the scriptures like Hephestoles. Your little girl over there would be called something ridiculous like Aspascia. And these two goons are definitely screaming Bull and Moose."

The one goon growled at her intentional insult and reached out to punch her. Which was when all hell broke loose. There were punches and gunshots from every angle. But when the dust cleared, Helo, Kara, and Lee were the only ones still holding their guns, and the man who seemed to be in charge was currently lying on the ground with one of Kara's boots planted firmly on his chest.

"So, did I get it right, Hephestoles?" she asked with a smile.

"The name's Anders."

"Samuel T. Anders?" Lee said, taking in the man's clothing for the first time. "Of the Caprica Buccaneers?"

"Yeah."

"And I expect that these other people around here are your teammates?" Helo said with a laugh. "Those two goons must be Ten Point and Fink. And this lovely lady on the ground beside me must be Sue-Shaun." He turned his attention to the other woman who had previously been holding a gun to him. "I have no idea who the frak you are."

"I'm Alexis Dauphine. I was training for the Caprican triathlon."

"Okay. Thanks for that information, lady," Helo said. "But I don't think your personal history matters right now. Because all I can seem to remember is you had your guns on us two seconds ago and were accusing us of being toasters."

"Good point," Lee said, turning back to look at where Anders lay. "We don't really appreciate that, Hephestoles."

"I said the name was Anders."

"Well, Samuel T. Anders, then," Kara said, sliding her foot off of him. "We are not Cylons. We do not wish you any harm. We're just going to go about our merry business and find a ride off of this planet. Nice to meet you. I wish I could say I was a big fan, but frankly, the C-Bucks are horrible."

"Who the frak are you?" Anders asked as he pulled himself up into a seated position.

"I'm Starbuck and that's Apollo. We've told you that already. The guy over there currently showing your little women the barrel of his gun is Helo. That's new information in case you want to file it away for future use."

"We're pilots in the Colonial Fleet," Lee said, taking pity on the obviously beaten man. It wasn't fun being on the receiving end of both Kara's fists and her words when she was so fired up. He should know. It was usually he who was her intended target. "We came here to retrieve something that was left behind during the attacks and now all we want is to just find a Raptor to get off this planet."

"I can help you with that," Anders said, pulling himself up off the ground. "My team and I have scouted out the surrounding areas. We know where you can get one."

Kara sent Lee a look of disgust. He knew she wouldn't be happy if they accepted this guy's help. She was way too independent to be pleased with the idea of needing some random pyramid player to offer her aid.

"How do we know you're not Cylons?" Helo asked, even though he was already holstering his gun.

"Yeah. How the hell do you expect us to believe a professional pyramid team managed to survive a nuclear holocaust?" Kara questioned.

"We were doing high altitude training in the mountains," Sue-Shaun volunteered as she stepped over to stand by Anders. "The Cylons attacked, and we waited out the nuclear storm. Found the first supply of anti-radiation meds we could get our hands on. Have been picking up more meds and weapons ever since."

"Weapons? What for? You going to stage some kind of rebellion?"

"To stay alive, little girl," Sue-Shaun said, shaking her head. "We got weapons so we wouldn't be killed."

Anders placed his hand on Sue-Shaun's arm to keep her from throwing more insults at the other woman. "Listen. Come back to one of our bases. You can get food, get a little rest, and then you can either take my advice or not. Either way you'll be rested when you chose to make your next move."

Helo looked at Kara who in turn looked at Lee.

"All right," Lee said after getting small nods from both his fellow pilots. "How far is it?"

"It's at the abandoned Delphi Union High School. The Cylons won't come near that place so it's safe."

"Fine. Take us there."

Anders nodded and started walking. His men followed in behind, leaving the three Galactica pilots to bring up the rear.

"Something's bugging me," Kara whispered to Lee as they walked side by side.

"Why would the Cylons avoid a mere high school on the edge of the woods surrounding of Delphi?"

"Exactly."

"I don't trust them," Helo whispered in Kara's other ear.

"Exactly."

The three pilots kept their hands on their holsters as they were led through the city in the opposite direction of the military base they had originally been moving toward.


	6. Varying Degrees of Stability: Part 5

Kara bounced the pyramid ball off of the metal sheet surrounding one of the goals. She couldn't believe these idiots had actually taken the time to build a regulation pyramid court when they should have been dreaming up a way to get off of this gods-forsaken planet. Another reason why they should ignore whatever advice the lead moron had to offer them.

She gripped the ball in her hand and found herself suddenly very pissed off at Lee. How could he go to sleep in the bunk they had been offered at a time like this? They needed to be working to get off this planet. Together, the two of them should be able to come up with something that would achieve their goal without getting anyone killed.

Sleep had evaded her as the idea of never returning to Galactica kept slowly creeping into her mind every time her eyes shut. She had sat up with a groan every few minutes in order to check to see if Lee was awake. It would have been nice to know she wasn't the only one scared right now. But every time she forced herself to stop tossing and turning, she could clearly hear the sounds of his slow breath as he got the sweet relief from his nagging thoughts that eluded her.

The least that bastard could have done was stayed awake long enough to play a few rounds of pyramid with her until she was too tired to stay awake. Letting out a gut-wrenching yell, she threw the pyramid ball at the goal opposite her and heard it enter with a satisfying crash.

"Nice shot."

She turned to glare as Anders walked over to her. He had such a cocky grin on his face that she found herself suddenly wishing she had the ball back in her hand just so that she could send it sailing at his head.

"I've played my share of pyramid games. I know what I'm doing."

"How does a pilot of the Colonial Fleet find time to play pyramid?"

"I haven't actually played in years. Not enough time when you're in the sky saving the world, you know?"

"Right."

"I was going to be drafted into the pros before I entered flight school. My knee got fraked up so it wasn't an option. Otherwise, you'd probably be kissing my ass seeing as how I would have been your captain. Maybe the C-Bucks would actually have been good then."

"Starbuck of the C-Bucks? I don't think so," Anders said pulling the ball out of the goal and tossing it around in the air a few times. "You might have been good once, but I'm sure that you lost the skill. As you said, you haven't played in years. Anyone can make an unopposed shot at the goal, little girl."

"Give me the ball," she hissed holding out her hand. She was surprised when he tossed it to her immediately.

"If you can score a goal on me, I'll admit I was wrong. But only if you score a goal."

"Get ready. Because I could score at least half a dozen goals on you without even trying. Like I said, the C-Bucks aren't that good."

Kara set herself down low as she prepared to make the first pass at the goal. The adrenaline had started pumping through her veins, and she knew that finally she might get some relief.

The next fifteen minutes was the most fun Kara had had in a long time. Probably since that night on Cloud Nine and the events that followed. But that hadn't quite satisfied the physical longing that pyramid did. She always felt so damn repressed when she spent time with Lee. When it came down to it, being with Lee was as exhausting as playing pyramid.

Playing with Anders was actually semi-challenging, too. She had been right to think that he would be good but not that good. The man was the Captain of a pyramid team that hadn't won the championship in over five years. Sure, he scored a few goals on her, but she scored twice as many on him.

She would have kept going, too, if the game hadn't shifted into a territory she wasn't sure she wanted to go. Ander's tackles started becoming more physical, and his hands were starting to rest on her thighs as she squared herself to spin and take her shot. His touch lingered on her body even when they were taking a few rare seconds apart to breathe. Not to mention, he had started sending these sexy little smirks and grunts her way as the game got serious.

As her last shot sang through the air and hit its targets, she realized why she found his method of playing so strange yet so familiar. It was like foreplay. The touching. The teasing. The taunting.

Anders picked up on the sly grin she knew must have run across her face at the thought. "Enjoying this?"

"I just realized that your Pyramid playing reminded me of my friend inside." Anders raised his eyebrows to indicate he was intrigued so she continued. "He flies the exact same way you play pyramid."

"Like a god?"

She had to hold in her laugh at his words. The fact that he would be cocky enough to compare himself to a god was ridiculous. The fact that he had somehow picked up that she was talking about Apollo and not Helo was absurd. "Not exactly."

"Then how?"

She thought it over and decided she really didn't want to have to explain the specifics of how she referred to flying with Lee as her wingman. The words 'foreplay of the sky' weren't something that rolled off her tongue easily.

"I'm done," she said, walking off the pyramid court.

Anders reached down to pick up a towel off of the ground and fling it her way. "What brings you out here in the first place? I would have thought you'd be in bed with your fellow pilots by now, Starbuck."

Kara paused in wiping the sweat off her face to raise her eyebrows at him in surprise. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Oh nothing," Anders said, innocently smiling at her. "I just thought that you obviously must be a little tense if you're not already sleeping in the quarters we gave you. Figured you might have asked one of your friends to help relieve that tension. And I'm not talking about on the pyramid court."

She gave him a glare before chucking the towel on the ground and setting off down the hall.

"Scratched a nerve?" he asked as he ran after her. "I didn't realize that was a sore subject."

"You don't know me well enough to know I'm exhibiting a massive amount of self-restraint in not laying you out on your ass right now."

"Tough words. I doubt you could land a punch though." Just as he had expected, Kara immediately lashed out with a right hook. He grabbed her arm and, using her own momentum, spun her so that her back slammed in against the wall. He pinned her hands to the walls and grinned. "Nice try."

"Let go of my hands," she hissed. Her breath was becoming slightly ragged. She desperately tried to blame it on the fact that he had taken her by surprise and not that fact that his leg was shifting itself firmly between her own two legs.

"Or you'll what?"

"Or I'll forget how useful my friends think you might be."

"You don't think I'm useful?"

"No."

Anders smirked and leaned in to whisper in her ear, "Not even to help you relieve that tension?"

Kara stiffened as she realized what he was offering. That had been what this whole damn thing was all about. He had challenged her to get her all riled up so then he could try to maneuver her into sleeping with him.

She knew it would be quite easy to just give in and let herself have a little fling while they were getting their downtime. But there was a lot riding on her right now and she couldn't be distracted. "You're not my type, pyramid boy."

"Really?" he said as he pulled her hands over her head. He gripped both wrists in one hand as he used the other to trace where her dogtags were lying on her chest. "Because I don't think you have a type, Starbuck."

She bit back a moan as his hands trailed their way down her stomach and paused at the waistline of her pants. It had been a long time since she had some release. And she wasn't getting it from the passed out pilot in her room, that's for sure.

"And I think you're the kind of girl that thrives on doing the things she knows she shouldn't." She arched an eyebrow at him which he took as an invitation to carry on. "Don't try to pretend like you don't want this, either. You're just dying to let a man push your buttons."

She still didn't give him an answer, but she didn't struggle as he undid the button on her combat pants and slid his hand in under the waistband. His fingers trailed the edge of her underwear before he pushed himself low enough to cup her heat. He wasn't surprised to feel her already moist. "See? Your body can't lie."

He was right. Kara's body was at war with her mind. She knew that this was not what she should be doing, but she couldn't deny that it didn't feel as wrong as she thought it would. As Anders gave up waiting for her to answer him back and simply slid a finger deep inside of her, she tried her best to forget all the reasons why she shouldn't be doing this. Feeling his touch turn to teasing as she continued to bit her lip, the image of Lee kept popping into her head. She couldn't push it away so she simply shut her eyes and tried to think of nothing but what this pyramid player's hands were doing as his efforts increased feverously. Lee's face faded away, but she couldn't rid her mind of the idea that this could easily be his hands causing her so much pleasure.

Since Kara's eyes were shut and Anders was firmly focused on watching her face as she tried to hold back, neither noticed the figure standing at the end of the hall, watching them.

Lee stood frozen in disbelief. He had woken up and immediately become concerned that Kara was not sleeping in the bed beside him. She had been agitated and antsy before he had fallen asleep, but he hadn't thought it was that bad. Suddenly worried, he had stepped outside the room without bothering to throw on the rest of his clothes and started searching.

He had found her playing pyramid with that Anders guy and for some reason, he hung back, unwilling to interrupt. She looked happy out there on the court. It took him a few seconds to put together why it seemed so familiar. She had the same grin on her face that she wore when he was flying with her. The idea that she could be like that with another man besides him hurt him in ways he didn't even begin to understand. He was about to turn and go back to the room they had been given when Kara glared at Anders and stalked away.

Again, a sort of sympathy arouse in Lee for the poor fool who was on the receiving end of one of Kara's glares. He set off to try to keep Anders from following her and getting himself hurt in some irreparable way. Because if he wasn't careful, Kara would chew him up and spit him out.

By the time Lee caught up with them, Anders had Kara pinned to the wall and she didn't look like she was struggling. He watched in horror as she let this stranger unbutton her pants and sink his hand deep inside. All he needed to see was the look on her face to know what Anders was doing down there.

Lee tried to tear his eyes away from the emotional train wreck that was in front of him, but he found he couldn't. This was like a punishment from the gods, forcing him to watch this. He felt like he had deserved it. It could have been him, driving Kara to madness with his hands, if only he had taken the time to let her know that's what he wanted more than anything else in the world. He wanted to be the one with his fingers buried deep inside her, making her moan.

With a start, he realized that the moaning wasn't solely in his mind. She had begun to do it in real life. He watched in horror as she started to buck against Ander's hand. She was now biting her lip almost to the point of drawing blood.

Lee turned to leave her to what she so obviously wanted when he heard her moans suddenly take form of a word. His eyes widened as his feet stumbled slightly. He wouldn't have believed his own ears if she hadn't done it immediately again, only this time a little louder. He could hear the dam breaking inside of her as the other man brought her to the edge and let her fall over.

He knew that witnessing her being so intimate with another man should be hurting him in so many unexplained ways. But in her own way, Kara had explained to him everything that she was feeling. With one small moan of a word so familiar to him, she had told him that he still had a chance.

Smiling, Lee shook his head as he made his way back to bed. He must be in love if he could see the positive in what just happened.

Meanwhile, Kara was hastily buttoning up her own pants as Anders leaned against the wall and stared at her. "What?" she hissed after a moment.

"So who's this Lee guy?" Anders asked.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Well, when you came, you moaned his name. Repeatedly. And with increasing enthusiasm. I was just wondering who he was."

Her hands froze in the middle of fixing her shirt as she suddenly realized what she had done. Somewhere in the middle of what Anders had been doing, reality and fiction had merged. She had seen Lee's face and imagined his hands on her.

"Come on. I think we're close enough now that you can tell me," Anders goaded her.

Kara didn't hit him was because she knew how much his ego must be hurting at having her moan another man's name. That was the only reason why she just sent him a glare and walked off in another direction. He didn't follow her. She didn't think, he would.

Decidedly exhausted after all that had gone on in the past hour, Kara made her way to the room the resistance fighters had given her and Lee. She pushed the door open to see Lee, lying wide awake on the bed.

"Hi," he said with a smile as she shut the door behind her.

Kara's eyes caught on where the Arrow had been carelessly flung on the dresser before looking over at where he lay on the bed. "Couldn't sleep?"

"You left me without saying you were going. It kind of threw off the whole idea of relaxing and not having to worry for a few hours."

"You were worried? I'm touched, Lee."

He rolled his eyes and threw back the covers on the other side of the bed. "Get in. I know you must be tired."

She gave him a funny look. Considering she probably looked rather jittery at the moment, she had no idea how Lee could realize that she was also completely exhausted in every sense of the word. She ignored the urge to ask him how he knew and instead settled on a safer topic. "You know, with all the room in this abandoned school, you think they could have given me a separate room from you like Helo got."

"Maybe that Anders guy thought we were lovers," Apollo said, shutting his eyes and turning to face away from her.

"And what would have given him that idea?"

"I don't know. Maybe all the unresolved sexual tension we radiate."

"Don't be an ass," she said, finally slipping into bed beside him.

He turned over to face her without saying a word. She stared at him silently for a moment before the fatigue began to set in and her eyes started to droop. Shaking her head quickly, she willed them to open back up. She got the inclination that there was something Lee wanted to say to her.

"Go to sleep, Kara. There's nothing to be worried about."

"Isn't there?"

He smiled and pulled her shoulder down so that her head rested against his chest. "Not from me. There's nothing to worry about from me."

She yawned softly before accepting what he said and nodding off to sleep.

Lee continued to stare up at the ceiling and marveled in the idea that once again there was another man out there who wanted to sleep with this woman in his arms. But once again she had ended up in his bed instead.

This was starting to be a pattern.

"Maybe someday I'll get the chance to be both of those men." He let himself drift to sleep with the idea that one day she might end up in his bed because she wanted to be there and not because she wanted to hide from her mistakes.


	7. Varying Degrees of Stability: Part 6

When they were all fully rested, Anders suggested they commandeer a vehicle to take them as far into the woods as they could manage before they made the rest of the distance on foot. Kara volunteered the off-road car-turned-tank she had stowed away in the garage of her apartment complex. Sue-Shaun added that she could probably hotwire a few of the cars on the streets that had made it through the Cylon offensive relatively unscathed.

Kara was none too happy when Anders insisted that he ride in the car with her, but she got some relief when Lee and Helo in turn insisted that they come along, too. At least with those two men with her, she knew she wouldn't be allowed to kill that pyramid bastard when he started taunting her about what had gone on the day before.

When the terrain got too rough, Anders figured it was time to check their maps and stow the cars where the Cylons wouldn't see them. The team was only standing around for a few minutes before Kara got bored and started picking at the weak points in the plan. Lee found himself glad that she was being so difficult. It meant that whatever had been bothering her so much that she couldn't sleep the day before had been worked through it. Some demons had been fought and beaten while they were trying to find a way to keep moving forward.

Kara was just making some snide remark about how Anders could totally be leading them into the woods just to kill them when the man being tormented twisted his body to turn and glare at her. "Would you just shut up? I'm doing my best to get you off this planet, and all I get in return is your bitchy comments. It's insulting."

"Hey!" Kara yelled, obviously offended. "I'm not the one that insists upon being so secretive. Where the hell is this base anyway?"

"I told you before that there's a Cylon base about two miles south and one mile east from where we are right now. It isn't patrolled heavily so you should be able to sneak inside and take one of their ships without much trouble. I'm trying to help here."

"But you never explained why if you knew about this base, you never went in and took a ship yourself."

"Does it look like we have a pilot?" Anders glared.

"If I were you and stuck on Caprica after a nuclear holocaust, that wouldn't matter," Lee said, stepping up to the side of the car that Anders and Kara had chosen to fight on. "I'd still try."

"Stay out of this, flyboy," Anders hissed, still glaring at the woman next to him.

Kara ground her teeth together for a moment to try to get her temper in check. Didn't he realize Lee was trying to protect him? It really pissed her off when people took cheap shots at Lee, even though she knew it was probably something they learned from watching her. It didn't matter. Only she was allowed to ruffle Lee's feathers. She continued to grind her teeth as she clenched her hands into fists to keep them from moving on their own.

When the rage didn't seem to dissipate, she just pulled her right fist back and connected with Ander's jaw as hard as she could manage. He went flying to the ground with a satisfying thud.

"Maybe you should be a little more respectful to the man who's going to fly you out of this shithole," she spit down at him.

Anders simply glared up at her. "Is this your subtle way of saying you have more tension you need me to work off for you, Starbuck? I mean, last time you tried to hit with me…"

Her face went pale at the fact that this man had the balls to bring that up while they were surrounded by other people. Obviously, he had no qualms about admitting that a girl had been picturing another guy while he was getting her off. She wouldn't have guessed that about him. "My tension levels are fine at the moment."

Anders pulled himself up off the ground, and after glancing quickly at where Lee stood beside them, whispered, "Don't want a quickie against a tree then? I promise I would do my best to keep the bark from cutting into your skin."

As soon as Lee heard those words, he knew there was going to be trouble. Thinking on instinct, he grabbed Kara by the elbow and dragged her to his side before she could start swinging again. "That's enough out of the two of you. We need to stop fighting each other if we're going to find a ship that will take us off Caprica. Whatever is going on between you two needs to be checked at the door right this minute."

Kara glared at both men before stalking over to where Helo was trying to read the map.

"Sorry about that," Anders said as soon as Kara was out of earshot.

"No problem," Lee said with a laugh. "I've known Starbuck for years. That's just the way she is. It has nothing to do with you."

"What made her like that?"

Lee turned to look at the man beside him. He looked like he honestly wanted to know more about what made Kara Kara. But in all honesty, Lee didn't have the right to tell Anders all she had gone through in her life. He would never betray Kara by throwing around the notions of child abuse, inadvertent murder, and bone-crushing guilt. "She's complicated."

Ander's mind shot back to the events on and off the pyramid court the day before. "Tell me about it." He sighed and shook his head. "She's one hell of a woman, though."

"Yes, she is," Lee replied, nodding slightly. "But she's one you're not even going to think about touching again."

Ander's face lit up in confusion as he turned to look at Lee. "What?"

"She is not available for you to constantly play your little mind frak games with."

"Seems to me like she liked it," Anders said, crossing his arms in front of him.

Lee gave him a small smile. "Listen. I know your type. And to be honest, you're exactly the kind of guy she used to go crazy for. The one that was such an ass that it didn't hurt her when the feelings didn't grow beyond a casual frak here and there. She thrived on it."

"That's an odd way to talk about your friend."

"She's a hell of a lot more than my friend," Lee said, turning to watch her as she argued loudly with Helo. "Which is why I'm not going to shoot you right on the spot."

"What's with the hostility?"

"I'm going to tell you this only once. Stay the frak away from her. She doesn't want what you keep offering."

"She seemed to want it yesterday," Anders said with a laugh as he narrowed his eyes. "I had her up against a wall begging for more."

Lee nodded slowly, still watching Kara for a moment. Then he turned to look at Anders once more. "You don't have a chance with her."

"And what makes you so sure?"

"My call sign is Apollo."

"So you think you're some all-knowing god who can tell me what that woman wants and doesn't want?"

"No," Lee said, staring at him intently. "I was just pointing out that you don't know my real name yet."

Anders shrugged his shoulders and gave Lee a so-what look. Lee rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to Kara as her little fight began to escalate. He really couldn't take her anywhere.

"It's Lee Adama, you fraking moron," he finally said with a small laugh. And then, without another glance in Ander's direction to see how he had taken this news, Lee walked over to try to keep Helo and Kara from killing one another.

Kara had just noticed Lee coming over towards them when the shots began to ring through the air. She grabbed her gun in her hand and turned to gauge the direction the bullets were coming from. She heard Anders yell something about needing to retreat into the woods, and then her world got a little blurry.

Lee pulled out his gun and dropped to the ground in time to dodge the few bullets that had come his way. He saw Helo straight ahead next to Kara, firing into the trees while backing up slowly. Why the frak wasn't Kara firing, too? Why wasn't she moving?

Kara watched in amazement as everyone around her started firing while they backed into the woods. She couldn't understand why it seemed like this was a scene from some war movie on television instead of something she was involved in. Everyone was moving incredibly slow and detached. She felt a small pang in her side and reached down to press it lightly. Her hand came back up red.

Lee saw Kara reach down to touch her side while Helo started running back into the woods with the rest of their group. He couldn't figure out why she was just standing there until he saw her hand come back up covered in blood. "Kara!" he screamed, pulling himself up off the ground and running towards her.

The last thing Kara remembered was hearing someone yell her name before her eyes rolled slowly into the back of her head and her body hit the floor.


	8. Varying Degrees of Stability: Part 7

Kara woke up groggily in what seemed to be a hospital bed. She looked around the room in confusion. The last thing she remembered was she was about to strangle Helo with the map because he kept insisting that they had been going in the wrong direction for over an hour. She went to sit up and was met with a sharp pain in her side.

Looking down, she realized that she was now dressed in a hospital gown. She pushed it delicately to the side and saw that her aching side was bandaged. The small red circle on the gauze made her mind suddenly recall the blood that had been on her hands. She had been shot by the Cylons.

Her hands slid the gown back in place as the door to her room opened and a man entered.

"Who are you?" she asked immediately. She had never seen the man before.

"I'm the doctor who took the bullet out of your side, Ms. Thrace."

"How do you know my name?"

"Your friends told me when they came looking for me."

"They came looking for you? I don't understand."

"Your friend Anders was very concerned for you. He found me at one of the other resistance bases a few days ago."

She stared at the doctor in confusion. Anders? Why the frak was Anders the one getting her help? Where were Lee and Helo?

"I'm just going to check your vitals," the man said, walking over to the machine.

"So you're a doctor."

"Have been for over fifteen years."

"And you survived the Cylon holocaust."

"Checked my pride and hid like a little child that day."

"And the resistance found you and you offered your services."

"Is there something you want to ask me, Ms. Thrace?"

"Are you a Cylon?"

The man looked at her a moment before laughing loudly. "They told me you would be blunt."

"They?"

"Your friends. We had a small bet. If you didn't ask me if I was a Cylon at some point during our first meeting, I could have won a rather nice car. Don't know what I'd do with such a tank of a car right now, but it would have been nice to have won anyway."

Those bastards used her car as a prize in a bet? She knew she should be pissed, but it actually made her feel a whole lot better. If someone was using something as valuable as her car to win a wager, then it would have to be someone who knew her well enough to know that this bet was a sure thing. Which meant that either Helo or Lee were around somewhere.

She shifted her position a few inches, trying not to wince at the increased pain in her side. The doctor noticed immediately.

"I'm going to inject some more pain killers into your IV. They should knock you out for a few hours."

"No, please don't," Kara said. In her head, she couldn't imagine giving up control of her situation like that. She had just woken up in a hospital where she thought she was in the care of the resistance. But what did she actually know? This man in front of her could be lying through his teeth. She did not want to be unconscious until she was sure that things were safe.

"You'll just pass out from the pain in a little bit anyway. So it will be better if I give you this drug to take the pain away now."

"I just woke up. I don't want to sleep anymore."

"Ms. Thrace, would you please trust me as your doctor to make the right decision here?"

"I didn't choose you to be my fraking doctor so I think that until I do, I should make my own health decisions." She pulled her arm away as he moved to push the needle into the catheter on her hand. "I said no."

"Please don't struggle. You'll rip your stitches."

"Stop trying to give me drugs I don't want, and I'll stop struggling, Doc."

Kara watched in horror as the Doc sat on the bed and pushed her arm down with force. He uncapped the needle with his teeth as she started to thrash and scream, "I said no, mother frakker!"

The door to her room burst open, and Lee came charging in, his hand resting on his gun. "What is going on here?"

"She won't accept pain killers, sir. I tried to tell her that they would only help her but she's too freaked out to listen."

Lee sighed and gestured for the doctor to move. "Maybe that's because she just woke up and you'll already trying to put her back under. Didn't Anders tell you to come find me immediately when she woke up?"

"No, he never mentioned anything of the kind."

Lee let out a frustrated growl as his hand relaxed away from its position near his gun. "Figures. Why don't you just leave me with her for a few minutes, Doctor? I guarantee by the time I leave this room she'll be resting comfortably with plenty of pain killers in her bloodstream."

The doctor gave him a look as if to say it would be a miracle if he could get that girl to take even a small amount of drugs. Holding his hands in the air, the doctor set the needle on the tray by Kara's bedside and left the room.

Lee looked over at Kara. "I'm sorry about him. But there's really not a lot of doctors to pick from on this planet anymore."

Kara stared at him, slightly stunned at everything that had just happened. Her eyes were filling with tears, and she was trying desperately to keep them inside. However, watching Lee stare at her with such concern written all over his face was the last straw, and she felt the tears began to pour down. They hit her hard and fast. She struggled to catch her breath as the sobs started.

"Tell me what's wrong," Lee begged as he sat on the bed beside her. "Tell me what's wrong, Kara, and I'll fix it."

She tried to form the words to tell him, but her crying was still overpowering every one of her senses. All she could do was shake her head at him.

Lee stared, extremely worried that this strong woman could be breaking down so easily and knowing he had no idea how to make things better. He simply lay his hand on top of where hers was on the hospital bed. Eventually, she looked over to meet his eyes. There was a small smile on his face even though she was still struggling to catch her breath. That little shift in the corners of her mouth made a huge weight lift off his shoulders. He smiled at her in return and squeezed her hand gently.

"I'm sorry about that," she said with a laugh. "It's just I woke up and you weren't here. And I didn't know if that guy was a Cylon feeding me a pack of half-truths. He told me that Anders was the one that found him and I was scared of why he didn't mention you or Helo. Because I knew that if you were okay, then you would be the one finding me some help. And then he tried to stick a needle in me even though I told him no."

"Pretty traumatic. I think you had every right to cry."

She rolled her eyes. "That wasn't why I was crying, Lee."

"It wasn't?"

She bit her lip and turned her eyes away from him. It suddenly hit him that the great Starbuck was blushing.

"I was glad to see you," she said quietly.

"Well, I was glad to see you too," Lee said. "I was worried your luck was going to run out with this one. We almost couldn't find a doctor in time."

"Was Anders really the one that found him?"

"Well, yeah. He is the one that's familiar with the resistance. I couldn't have found you a doctor on this planet if I had a week. So I let him do all the work and I just waited by your side until Doctor Chetnam got here."

"What if Anders didn't find the doctor?"

"Then I would have done my best to remember the classes we had to take on field medicine in Academy and I would have dug that bullet out myself." He let out a small laugh, and she could see his eyes return to the familiar gleam they always had. He must have decided she really was going to be all right. "Do you actually think I would have sat back and let you die, Kara?"

She shook her head and smiled. The small movement put some strain on her abdomen, and she immediately tensed up in pain. She pushed the hospital gown to the side again to stare at the gauze patch taped on to her stomach. "How bad is it?"

"You're going to have one nice scar and an equally nice war story to go with it," he replied.

"Could you pull off the patch? I want to see it."

Lee hesitated a moment before nodding. She felt his fingers gently push and pull at the tape holding the patch in place. He was being so hesitant that she couldn't even feel the adhesive pulling at her skin, let alone feel any sort of stress placed on her battle wound.

With a small tug, the whole patch fell off and Kara looked down. The wound was rather small, not even two inches in length. The stitches looked strong, but she could already see bruising around where they had entered her skin. It appears like when you're on a planet that's been devastated by evil machines, you don't have ready access to the new kinds of stitching, only the thread and needle variety. No wonder she didn't wake up from the pain sooner.

She felt Lee's fingers dance across where her stitches were. He was staring at her abdomen intently and tracing the outline of the stitches lightly. Almost without warning, Kara watched as he leaned down and kissed the wound lightly. He pulled back but continued to focus his attention on her wound. "Such a little wound for how much I worried," he whispered.

Kara reached out to nudge Lee's chin up until his eyes met hers. "What happened to me?"

"I'm not really sure how you got shot. All I know is I turned around to see if you were behind me and you were still standing beside your car with blood on your hands. I yelled your name but you collapsed before you could respond."

"I heard you," she said with a big smile.

"I fired my way back to where you were and picked you up into my arms."

Kara's face erupted in concern. "But you couldn't have kept firing at the Cylons with me unconscious in your arms."

"Well, no, I couldn't. But I didn't even think about that at the time. All I knew was that I had to get you away from there. The Cylons were moving in, and I think they meant business."

"Some job I did of keeping you safe. I can't even keep myself from being shot."

"I don't need you to protect me, Kara."

"Obviously," she said with a small snort.

"But I appreciate the effort nonetheless."

Her breath caught in her throat as he turned his attention back to her wound, which still lay open to the air. His fingers began tracing a path along her stomach.

"I don't think the wound's going to change, Lee, no matter how much you will it to," Kara said with a laugh.

"Your skin's really soft," he said, smiling up at her brightly for a moment. "I didn't realize."

"I am a woman," she pointed out.

"Trust me. I've never forgotten that for a second." He leaned his head against her stomach and placed another kiss near the wound. This time Kara found her hands moving to run through his hair as he continued to trace a line of kisses all the way across her stomach. It definitely felt a lot better than the pain she was in before.

"Hmm," she said with a slight moan.

"What?" he asked, pulling back from her so that he could meet her eyes.

"Turns out that kissing does make things feel better.

Lee shook his head and stood up off the bed. "Well, if you're feeling better, then I should probably give you this drug before the pain kicks back in."

She nodded and held her right hand out for him. Now that it was Lee with the needle, she wasn't worried at all. Silently, he tested the needle for air pockets and then inserted it into the IV catheter. The medication started going to her head immediately.

"The doctor said that you should be fine enough to move in a few days. I figured I could help you hobble along to whatever transportation we could fine."

"I resent having to lean on you," she whispered.

"Then you shouldn't have let yourself get shot, Thrace."

Lee moved to step out of the room and give her some peace, but her hand jumped up to latch onto his arm rather tightly. "Is something the matter? Are you in pain? Is something wrong?"

She shook her head. "Don't go. Please."

Lee nodded and sat down on the bed again. He took her hand in his and kissed the top of it gently as her eyes started to drop. Movement outside the window made him turn away from her for a moment.

Almost as if she knew, she muttered in a sleepy voice, "You won't leave me, will you, Lee?"

"No," he said, even though he was pretty sure there was something happening outside that he should probably be a part of. However, making sure Kara wasn't alone when she woke up again was more important than anything else at the moment. "I won't leave you."

"Okay," she said, her body relaxing completely as sleep took hold.


	9. Varying Degrees of Stability: Part 8

Kara woke up half naked and extremely cold. The only thing that kept her from freaking out again was the presence of Lee hovering over her. He appeared to be rather interested in her body at the moment, and she couldn't help but laugh to herself. "Decide to get fresh while I was knocked out, Captain?" she said, quirking her eyebrow up at him.

He looked up to meet her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank gods you're awake. This was too damn embarrassing without you teasing me. Not exactly how I imagined this moment to be."

"Do you often dream of violating me in my sleep, Captain?"

He gave her a smile and shrug. "I need you to help me get you dressed, Kara."

She looked down at where his hands were desperately trying to pull a pair of pants up over her hips. "Is that what you're doing?"

"You think I would honestly be trying to put more clothes on you once I had finally gotten you half-naked?" he said with a laugh.

"Funny," she said, reaching down to yank the pants up. She ignored the gentle nag of pain as they rested on her stomach. She suddenly took notice of the fact that being half-naked meant that she was also half-dressed. "How did I get a sports bra on?"

"I put it on you a few minutes ago," Lee said as he gently raised her to a sitting position.

"Enjoy the show?"

"Immensely. I hope to catch one like it again as soon as possible." He slipped an arm under hers and gently lifted her off the bed. When he felt her knees buckle, he simply placed his other arm underneath her knees and scooped her off the ground.

"What's the rush, Captain?" she said. "I should be fine enough to walk in a few minutes."

"We don't have a few minutes. We have a ship, and we need to get off Caprica before the Cylons attack."

"You got a ship without me?" she asked as Lee carried her through the door and out into the hallway. The disappointment was clear in her voice.

"I would never cheat you out of fun like that," he replied, mocking horror at her accusation. After she let out a little laugh and he had basked in it for a few moments, he switched back to a serious tone. "Actually, Helo's girlfriend showed up with it."

Kara's grip on Lee tightened almost by reflex. "Boomer's here?"

"Seems she really loves the father of her child. Enough to defy all her programming and give him a way off of Caprica. She wants to come back to Galactica with us."

"That makes no sense," Kara said. She squinted as they stepped out into the sunlight. Her eyes quickly recovered in time to leave her staring in awe at the piece of machinery before her. It was too impressive for words. "Do I get to drive?" she asked in wonder.

"No. You can't even walk. I'm not letting you drive," Lee said with a laugh.

Kara looked back at all the people standing around the outside of the hospital. "What about all those people? They can't fit in that ship."

"No, they can't. We're taking as many people as we can, but we're going to have to leave some behind." When he saw Kara's eyes widen in horror at the idea, he gave his look of intense resolve. "I will convince President Roslin we have to return for them. Don't worry. And you and I can come back for them personally if you want."

"Together?"

"Together."

Kara nodded and looked around at the people again. Her eyes rested on where Anders stood. It was obvious he hadn't slept since the attacks. His face was gaunt, and he looked like he was about to pass out from exhaustion. So much had changed in the hours that she had been out of the action.

It suddenly clicked in her head what seeing the Captain of the C-Bucks standing outside really meant. "Isn't Anders coming with us?"

"No. I offered him the first seat, but he said he couldn't. Sue-Shaun, his teammate…" Lee's voice trailed off, and he cleared his throat before beginning again. "She disappeared in the chaos of the Cylon attack. Anders said he can't leave until he's found her."

"War can build some intense bonds," Kara said, still staring sadly at Anders, the ex-pyramid player who had been nothing but helpful to them this whole time. After a moment, she shifted to look up at the man carrying her in his arms. "Even among people who already have a connection."

Lee tightened his hold on her as they passed Anders. He gave him a small nod before looking down to respond to her words. "War can also make people realize how stupid they've been."

She looked up at him in confusion. "What are you talking about, Lee? Because I swear to the gods, if you're calling me stupid now, when I obviously am too weak to defend myself, I will kill you with my bare hands once my body heals."

"I wasn't talking about you," he said as he walked up the ramp onto Heavy Raider. "I was talking about myself."

Kara waited for him to continue with what he was saying, but he didn't. Her mind just filed that away as a conversation for another, more appropriate day. The conversation effectively dropped, she turned her attention to looking at the lucky handful of people who had been elected to leave Caprica. Her eyes met with the doctor who had scared the frak out of her earlier. "Why does he get to come?" she whispered in Lee's ear.

"Because having Dr. Chetnam on board Galactica means we'll have two competent doctors. And if we do it this way, he'll be around in case something goes wrong with you on the flight home."

"You shouldn't let him come just because you're scared for me," she scolded.

"I'll do what I think is best," he said. Her eyes fell to the small cylinder leaning against the wall of the Raider. The Arrow. He hadn't forgotten. She smiled at the sudden pride of having accomplished what they set out to do. She could feel Lee thinking the same thing as his face broke out into a grin. He gently set her down on the makeshift chairs they had fashioned into the ship. She couldn't help but notice that the touch of his hands lingered on her stomach for a moment longer than necessary. He really was worried about her. It was endearing. "I'll be right back, Kara."

She watched him jog away, presumably to tell Helo that she was on board. Or maybe he was telling Boomer. Were they letting the Cylon pilot this thing back? She started to think over all the things that there hadn't been time to explain to her yet.

By the time Lee returned to her side, Kara was really starting to get pissed at the prospect of a Cylon piloting them home. "Why aren't you flying?" she demanded.

"Because a certain pilot requested that I not leave her side," he said with a laugh as he settled down in the seat next to her.

"I didn't mean on the flight home."

"All the same, I'm not flying."

"Who is?"

"Boomer. She is the expert on Cylon technology. But don't you worry. When it comes time to talk on the comms to Galactica, she won't be doing it. I don't fancy making it all the way back to Kobol only to be shot down immediately."

Kara bit her lip as her mind shifted to what would be waiting for her when she returned home. The Old Man was going to be furious with her.

"Don't get that way," Lee said, pulling her chin up so that she looked at him. "I don't like it when you frown."

She gave him as big of a fake smile as she could manage. "Better?"

"No."

They sat in silence as the Heavy Raider rumbled to life and took off into the air moments later. Kara immediately felt the gentle weightlessness of space pour into her every fiber. It already felt like she was home. Beside her, she could feel Lee having the same reaction. Almost on cue, he reached out to grasp her hand.

They stayed joined like that until they were well above the planet. It would be a few minutes before they could risk engaging the FTL drive to make the jump back to Kobol. They had a little time to kill, and something Lee had said before but never explained was nagging at Kara. She decided she couldn't put it off for a more appropriate time. She had to ask him now.

"Lee?" He turned to look at her, and the way his eyes look all open wide and innocent made her hesitate a second before asking, "What did you mean when you said that you were being stupid?"

She could see him pause before he slide out of his seat to crouch before her and finally spoke. "I've learned to push my feelings to the side for so long, Kara. If they weren't convenient or weren't what people expected me to feel, I shoved them away and did my best to forget. It's worked well for me throughout the years. Helped me do my job better. Hell, it was probably the thing that got me on the fast track to being an officer during school. But in the end, I don't know how much good it's done me. It was stupid to put off the way I felt, I guess. Because I never really knew what was real."

Lee stared at her a moment. That little bit had been the easy part. The next bit was going to be a lot harder. Especially if she kept looking at him with the naively innocent face that didn't fit with the life he knew she had lived. "You see, when I start feeling something I know I shouldn't, I try to rationalize it. To figure out where it's coming from and why. When it can't be rationalized, I just ignore it until it goes away. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Kind of," Kara said. She tightened the hand still held in his in a show of support.

He turned his head so that he was staring over her shoulder at the wall. Keeping from looking her in the eyes should make this last part a little less rough. "I'm tired of doing it, Kara. I'm tired of pretending that there's nothing there when in reality, I've never felt something like this. I just want to be able to sit here and talk with you without worrying what other people will think. I don't want to worry about repercussions and what the Fleet would do if they knew."

As they turned to meet hers, his eyes flickered for a second with so much emotion it scared her.

"I just want to be able to tell you how I feel, Kara."

Her heart skipped a beat as she realized that this was actually happening. In the most ridiculous place at the most ridiculous moment, this was finally happening. And it scared her to death.

They couldn't do this. It was the worst time possible for them to be doing this. The world as they knew it was in complete upheaval. They could not start doing the things they never imagined they could do. There wasn't time.

"Kara?" Lee said hesitantly. He crouched down slightly to force her down-turned eyes to meet his. "Say something."

"You can't say what I think you are about to. It's the wrong damn time to be doing this." She shrugged her shoulders a little. "Plus, I've always found that the fantasy is usually a lot better than the reality. We should just stick to that and keep things as uncomplicated as possible."

Lee stared at her a moment before standing up straight. He paced a few feet back and forth before he crouched down once more in front of her and took her hands back in both of his. "Answer me this. Don't you every get tired of sleeping with men who don't really care about you? Who you don't even care about?"

His words cut her to the core, and she whipped her hands away from him. "You have no idea what the frak you're talking about."

"Don't I?"

"No," she growled, all signs of innocence and naiveté erased from her face.

"Kara, I know about Anders."

The words hung heavy between them. Kara found herself wondering what he meant. He knew about Anders. Does that mean Lee knew she was attracted to Anders? That he knew she had allowed Anders to have his way with her body? That she allowed Anders to touch her and then pretended it was Lee?

"Kara, don't you understand? I don't care. You can frak all the guys you want, but it always ends the same. You always end up coming back to me." He reached up and brushed a stray hair out of her eyes. "Why can't you just admit that a casual little fling isn't really what you want?"

"And I suppose you think that what I really want is you," she said, the normal flavor of sarcasm tinting her words.

Lee's mind immediately fell back to the kisses he had placed on the small scar on her stomach. She had shivered under the gentle touch of his lips. That had to have meant something. "I know that at the very least your body wants me."

"You're an attractive man. Something would have to be wrong with me if I didn't respond to you if you chose to show me affection."

"That's a very safe answer," he said, shifting so that his knees touched the ground and he was now resting his body between her thighs. His hands held tight to the slightly ticklish area about her knees, but she really didn't feel like laughing at the moment.

"What do you want from me, Lee?"

"I want you to admit that it's not just your body that I have. Because as much as I want that, there's something I want a lot more." He took one hand off her leg to tap lightly on her chest. "So stop being stupid."

"I'm not stupid," she said, lifting her hand up to attempt to push away the tears that were beginning to form at the corners of eyes.

Lee's hand caught hers before she could, and he placed her palm gently against the seat by her side. When he was sure she wouldn't move it again, he reached up and used his thumbs to rub gently below her eyes. They came away moist with her tears, and it was all he could do to hold back the urge to take her into his arms. For such an emotionally distanced woman, she was incredibly vulnerable most of the time.

"Tell me you love me, Kara."

"I can't," she choked. "I can't."

"Tell me you love me."

"It's… I… why are you doing this to me, Lee?"

He pushed another round of tears away and smiled. "Because I love you."

His words made her choke slightly, and her mouth fell open just a little bit. Lee took the opportunity to lean in and place his lips softly on hers. When she didn't move, he reached his hand up to cup the back of her neck and pushed her lips against his, establishing a firm pressure between them. When she still didn't respond, he pulled back until he no longer kneeled in front of her. He pushed himself to his feet and gave her one last look before turning away. It was all he could do to ignore the pain that was currently making itself at home deep inside his chest.

He had tried. That was really all he could do.

Kara watched his face turn to one of total dejection before he turned and began to walk away. And suddenly she knew what he had meant about war making people realize how stupid they were being. "Lee?" she called out hesitantly. She knew her voice betrayed the emotion she was feeling, but at the moment, she didn't care if anyone overheard her. All she cared about was that one man. She had to know that he had heard her.

Lee paused in his steps, and she could see him debating whether to turn around a moment. Eventually, he did take a few steps in order to face her. He didn't say a word, and they just both stayed where they were, staring at one another.

"I love you," she whispered finally.

His eyes lit up as her words registered with him, and the pain inside his heart took on a more gentle tug. He was about to walk back over to her side when Helo stuck his head out of the cockpit area. "We need you up here. Boomer said the Raider's ready to jump so you have to be prepared to make that comm broadcast the second we enter the Kobol system."

"Understood, Lieutenant," Lee said to him. He turned back to look at Kara before preparing to do his job. "We're not done with this, Kara."

She shook her head in understanding and gave him a little smile. "Say hi to Dee for me."

"She's going to kill you for giving her that heart attack before we left."

"Don't I know it," Kara said with a laugh.

Lee's gaze settled on her for a moment more before he turned to follow Helo back into the controls.

Kara let out the breath she had realized she had been holding. "Well, that turned out to be a lot easier than I expected."

Feeling the first signs of exhaustion tugging at her insides, she shut her eyes. The corners of her mouth raised up a little in the beginnings of a smile. Had she actually just told Lee Adama that she had loved him?

As sleep took hold, she realized for the first time that she was glad that she had gone through that in reality rather than in her dreams. It may have been messier and full of a lot more pain than anything she could have cooked up in her head. But there was a gentle voice in her head that kept reminding her of the one thing her dreams could never have had.

When she woke up, her love for Lee would still be there. But this time, he would know.


	10. Varying Degrees of Stability: Part 9

When they stepped off the Raider, Lee and Kara realized almost immediately how much they had missed in the week or so they had been gone. They had expected to have pandemonium on their hands when they took their copy of Boomer off the ship and exposed her as a Cylon to the whole Fleet. It turned out not to be necessary.

One day after they had left, Galactica's Boomer had shot Commander Adama. He had almost died four times before Doc Cottle managed to keep him stable.

There was a small group of pilots stuck down on the surface of Kobol. They had been shot down while doing a standard fly-by of the area the President believed the Tomb of Athena to be in. Kara found herself incredibly scared for them. She knew from the Scriptures that every return to Kobol exacts a price in blood. It didn't help that the people currently stranded on Kobol included Racetrack, Cally, and the Chief. All three of them were people she had let in past her walls over the years.

On a happier note, though, Adama had returned to power only hours before the Heavy Raider had landed. He was there in the hangar deck to greet them along with the President.

All possible thoughts that the Old Man might be mad at her were wiped away as the look of concern washed over his face. Kara figured it wasn't every day he saw his only son carry Galactica's most stubborn pilot off of an enemy ship. Adama hobbled over to where Lee stood with her securely in his arms and reached up to touch her cheek gently. "Don't ever do that again. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, sir," she said, dropping her head.

"I don't ever want to think I've lost both of my children in one fatal swoop."

That was all the words of comfort she got to hear because Helo chose that moment to lead Sharon off the ship and all hell broke loose.

The next thing Kara knew, Lee had thrown her down on top of a nearby cargo box and was using his strength to now hold up his father after the shock of seeing his would-be assassin. Then someone accidentally knocked into her hard and the pain from her gunshot wound consumed her whole body. Immediately, she felt her vision go black as she slid to the floor.


	11. Varying Degrees of Stability: Part 10

For about the fiftieth time that week, Kara woke up to find herself in a new location. This time, however, it was about as familiar as it could be. The recognizable smell of sweat and motor oil hung in the air, and she could feel the light filtering in through the curtain attached to the bunk even though she was hesitant to open her eyes. The noise of the pilots talking and laughing somewhere below was welcome to her ears. This was where she had wanted to be the whole time she had been gone from Galactica.

The only thing she wasn't sure about was why she was in Lee's upper bunk and not her own down below.

"Good morning, sunshine."

At the sound of that familiar morning raspy voice in her ear, she suddenly realized that she wasn't alone in Lee's bunk. Smiling, she opened her eyes and looked down at where Lee lay with his arm draped protectively over her stomach. "Hi."

"I'm still alive."

Lee flicked on the light in the bunk. "Thanks to me. I picked your unconscious butt up off that hangar bay and carried you down to Doc Cottle all by myself."

"I wasn't going to die."

"Actually you might have. The wound on your stomach got partially infected somehow. Doc had to reopen the wound and stitch you up again." Lee smiled and reached up to play with a tendril of her hair. "I held your hand the whole time just in case you woke up."

"Oh, you hopeless romantic, you." She struggled to sit up.

"Don't move. The Doc said you should stay in this bunk without getting up for at least the next twelve hours."

"So I guess that means someone's going to be flying my CAPs?"

"And mine. I told my father that I think I deserved a little downtime for bringing the Arrow back to the Fleet. Downtime can be a lot of fun if you have someone to share it with, you know?"

She shivered as he lightly trailed his fingers down her side until they rested on the waistband of the sweats she was currently wearing. Her eyes had flown shut as her mind latched on to all the things they could be doing during the unexpected downtime. But when his hands paused, they flew back open.

"The Doc says that you also shouldn't exert yourself physically for the next twenty-four hours," Lee said, giving her a comical frown. "He actually recommended to my father that I not be granted downtime. I think he might have realized something was going on between us."

"I wonder what tipped him off," she said with a laugh. "Maybe the fact that you wouldn't leave my side during my operation. Or the fact that you, in all probability, abandoned your ailing father to pick my butt up off the hangar room floor."

"Could be. Or it could have been when I pulled him to the side after setting you down on a sickbay bed and told him that if he didn't fix the woman I loved, then I would personally make his life a living hell."

"Awww. You didn't." She ruffled his hair with her hand. "You're so damn cute when you're being protective."

"I seem to end up doing that a lot when I'm around you."

"What can I say? I'm just a vulnerable pile of mush most of the time. Someone's got to make sure I don't get walked all over. But let's not dwell on that. Instead, let's dwell on the fact that you told Doc Cottle that you loved me."

"It gets easier to say every single time, Kara." He smiled up at her as he rested his chin lightly on her chest, being careful to mind her fresh wound. "You should try it sometime."

She rolled her eyes. "I love you."

"I love you what?"

"I love you… please?"

"Say my name, Kara."

She crinkled up her nose at him. "No. That just sounds funny."

"Come on. Say my name, Kara." He tickled her side lightly.

"No. I don't want to."

"You didn't have trouble saying it before. Or should I say moaning it?"

"Were you taking advantage of my unconscious state again, Adama?"

He let out a laugh. "I wish I had thought to do that, but no. I was simply referring to your little display of love for me down on Caprica." When she looked at him confused and still slightly vulnerable, he wanted to laugh even harder. But he held back. "I mean, you weren't exactly with me physically at the time. But somehow I felt like I was right there." He reached his hand down to slowly push its way in past the top of her pants. "I mean, I was there with you, wasn't I, Kara?"

Her face froze in horror as she realized what he was referring to. "I… You… But… You weren't supposed to be awake."

He shook his head. "And that makes it fine that you let a guy hand-frak you while you were in love with me?"

She bit her lip and shrugged. "Got to get your release somehow. It seemed the safest way."

Lee withdrew his hand from her pants and laughed at the wounded look on her face at the sudden coldness the withdrawal left behind. "I'm not punishing you for that. Doc Cottle said no exerting yourself and I'm afraid if I continued on my little journey there, we would both end up exerting ourselves for pretty much the rest of our downtime."

Kara felt herself shiver at the thought of being alone in a bed naked with Lee. She paused and cocked an eye open to look at him. "How much time off did we get anyway?"

"A whole four days."

"Okay," she said, resuming her thoughts. Again she shivered at the idea of being alone in bed naked with Lee for a whole four days with nothing to tear them apart.

"But I don't think you're going to last more than two," he said softly.

"You think I can't stand being bed-ridden? Because I'm telling you, if you're here with me, it won't be that hard. What'll be hard is the non-exerting part."

Lee let out a laugh. "No. I wasn't talking about anything like that. It seems that my father has set up a rescue mission for the downed Raptor. A group of Galactica's finest is going down to the surface of Kobol to pick them up on the way to the Tomb of Athena."

Kara's eyes went wide. "Really? And I'm stuck here in my bed?"

Lee shook his head. "I got the Old Man to agree that if you didn't move a muscle for two days and Doc Cottle gave the okay, you could come with me on the mission."

"You're going."

"Of course. It is my Arrow after all."

Kara laughed at all the hidden meanings to that phrase. "So, Apollo? What are we going to do for two days while we wait?"

He reached up and turned off the light in the bunk. "Come up with ways for you not to exert yourself, of course."

She had time to smile for a few seconds before he leaned down to kiss her.

"Lee?" she said, pulling away from him for a moment.

"Hmm?" he whispered. He tried to pull himself back in close to her only to have her pull her lips out of his path yet again.

"Have I gotten more stable for you?"

His face scrunched up in confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"You said to me the night of Colonial Day that you were struggling to make me someone you could count on."

He shut his eyes and tried to push the desire back down. She was being serious about this, and he couldn't just tell her it didn't matter and beg her to start kissing him again. That wouldn't be very respectful. "Kara. I never said I couldn't count on you. In fact, there's never once been a time where I doubted that you had my back. In the air or on the ground."

"But you can't rely on me to be there all the time. I'm too hot-headed, and my temper's too much of a pain in the ass. I'd probably end up in the brig when you needed me most."

He shook his head. "No. You really wouldn't. I mean, the one time where I needed you by my side so much that I wasn't even willing to admit it, you were there. I needed you to come to Caprica with me, and you wouldn't take no for an answer when I tried to make you stay. So, see? When it comes down to it, you're incredibly stable in your own special way."

"Don't patronize me, mister," she said, narrowing her eyes at him.

"I'm not. I'm just trying to get you to stop talking so we can go back to the kissing." He bit his lip and gave her the look she had silently dubbed his 'cute smile'. "Can we please go back to the kissing?"

"You're insatiable, Lee Adama."

"And you love me," he said, pulling himself up so that his head lay on the pillow next to hers.

"Yeah," she said with a smile as she stretched her neck to place a kiss on his nose. "I really do."

END


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